


Shockwave

by hahaharley



Series: pastimes [4]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight (2008)
Genre: Action, Crimes & Criminals, F/M, Psychological Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 20:11:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 79,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14722823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hahaharley/pseuds/hahaharley
Summary: We all fall down!





	1. interlude / chapter one

**Interlude**

And the Joker drops the knife, stepping smoothly out of the way just in time to avoid getting a mess on his shoes as it falls to the concrete floor with a clatter and a splatter of blood. He isn't quite as careful with his hands, and he _tsk_ s at the sight of the thin spray on his right wrist. With his left hand, he pats his pockets in search for the handkerchief he usually carries, remembers abruptly that it's currently being used as a gag, and rolls his eyes in mute exasperation. _Oh, well._ He stoops down and wipes the rubbery material clean on the uniform of the deputy he's just killed ( _will have killed_ , anyway; the guy's technically still twitching and gurgling but the Joker doesn't like his odds), then rises again, bracing a hand against his back as he goes and bending backwards until he feels a satisfyingly painful _crack_ , followed by a fresh sense of looseness.

_Mm, that's the stuff._

Now it's time to go get Emma.

 _Oh, Emma_. If there is anything left in his withered heart that _could_ love, she would be its object. (Probably for the better that it can't. He doesn't really remember _why_ , but he gets the distinct impression that his love, back when he was still _able_ to love, was inevitably deadly, and Emma is too much fun to be dead right now.)

He isn't in the habit of feeling such affection for ordinary people, but then, Emma isn't ordinary, is she? Despite all her efforts—and they are _substantial_ —there's always something in her that betrays her, something that seems to veer just a _little_ bit to the side of what can pass for normal. That tendency of hers makes her unpredictable, so it's a little like dating someone with DID—you never know _who's_ going to show up to dinner. The Joker likes that, likes that she can't help herself. Makes him feel all tingly.

His reverie is interrupted before it can really get going, his eye drawn by the sudden glare of high beams through the dirty windows. He catches up his pocket watch—it fell from his vest pocket in the struggle and is still swinging by its chain—and consults the face, then hums in a pleased sort of way. "Right on time," he remarks out of the ragged corner of his mouth, then tucks the watch away and crosses the room, shoving the door open and letting himself out into the damp night.

* * *

**I**

Interrogation rooms are the pits. I've spent enough time in them by now, I think, to say that definitively. I know that's the point of interrogation rooms—to be unpleasant—but that hardly makes me feel better about my situation, which is this: hunched wearily in a hard chair, underneath ugly greenish light, hands shackled, waiting for an attorney who will probably never arrive as various people just ask me the same things in a seemingly-unending loop.

I wouldn't have asked for a lawyer if they hadn't arrested me the second the hospital cleared me for release. It seems the days of firm-but-polite requests, _come on down to the station, no you're not in trouble we just want to talk to you,_ are over. They're looking to nail someone to the wall, and I imagine I'm the only person they've got on hand, though I don't know much for sure, since no one is telling me anything. The signs are there, enough for me to insist on representation and keep my mouth mostly shut.

I _expected_ to get arrested, but I thought it would be by the state police, or whoever reigns over the little county upstate where I've been living. I expected I'd be dealing with the marshals that oversaw my flimsy witness protection. Instead, I'm at a police station in north Gotham, which was one of my first big indicators that something is screwy here. Whatever happened up at the farmhouse—whatever they _think_ happened—was well out of the Gotham PD's jurisdiction, but here I am.

Another indicator that something's wrong is that I haven't heard a single thing from or about Jim Gordon. This last run-in with the Joker might have tested his sympathies beyond their limits, so it's not that I'm anticipating his help or support, but at the very least, I trust him to run things legally. Instead, I'm dealing with a small torrent of street officers, one after the other, and my requests for Gordon go completely unheeded.

For now, at least, I'm alone, which is a small mercy—I've never enjoyed the company of the police, much less so when I'm under suspicion. I roll my stiff neck in an effort to ease the discomfort, wincing when the motion irritates the still-healing wound there, now cleanly and professionally bandaged.

I'd been taken to the hospital shortly after the police arrived last night. I'd argued against it, though without much energy, and not for long: I needed _some_ sort of break after the events of the previous days. I'd let them tend to the various cuts and scrapes I'd picked up, with an exception: I was careful not to reveal the livid scratches along the inside of my thigh, and resisted the one or two mild attempts made to examine me to an extent that would expose them. From what I could gather, the doctors and nurses didn't really know the details of my situation. If they had, they might have been more insistent, but as it was, they allowed me the modicum of privacy I demanded and limited their attentions to the visible injuries.

They kept me overnight, and I managed to sleep some, trying to get some rest before the storm I knew was coming. This morning, they discharged me—directly into the waiting arms of the Gotham Police.

That was hours ago, though I don't know how many, exactly. It feels like eight or more, though I haven't had access to a clock since they picked me up and realistically it's probably less. Same as the last time I was arrested, I haven't been processed, though I imagine that's going to change before much longer. I get the sense that they're being cautious, trying to figure out what charges to bring against me. It's a tricky situation: if they don't step carefully, they could accuse me of all the wrong things and get all those charges tossed out. They're waiting, I think, until they have a better understanding of what happened at the farmhouse, and I'm not giving them anything to work with until I speak to a lawyer. Since they are _withholding_ a lawyer, things are at a standstill.

It sucks, but not as much as it _could_. I could be stuck indefinitely in a holding cell with people bigger and meaner than I am. _Or_ , I think in an effort to brighten my outlook, _I could be dead, killed by Victor Zsasz. Or worse: I could be_ _ **hanging out**_ _with Victor right now._

"Noooo thank you," I whisper to myself, and then the door behind me opens with a _clang_ and I focus up.

I know as soon as I see him that this new guy means trouble, tipped off by his plain clothes—black pants, rumpled white button-up. He keeps close to the wall as he circles me, and comes to a stop at the opposite side of the table, dropping a thick folder on the surface with a loud _thwack_. He doesn't sit or look at me, just stands slightly off-center, opening the folder and flipping through it, though his air is almost absent-minded. I sneak a glance at the file, and despite seeing it upside down, I see a few photos of the Joker in grotesque black and white before he flips over to plain typed text.

"Miss… Emma Vane," he says at length, "I'm Detective Lewis March," and then he looks at me.

He immediately gives me the creeps. Now that he's looking at me, I see the gauntness of his face, and I double-check his clothes, seeing the bagginess there and confirming that, yeah—in contrast to nearly every other cop I've met, he's about ten pounds underweight. Granted, it's not much, but he doesn't wear it well: his blue eyes, already large, seem to protrude from their hollow sockets, bulbous, and the fact that he hasn't blinked at all since he turned his gaze on me doesn't help. His face is cut severely and his wrists and fingers are bony. He's not _ugly_ : he's young, about thirty, and tallish, maybe six feet. He has a full head of windswept brown hair and a clean-shaven face, his bone structure is good, and despite the thinness he would actually be quite handsome if not for the unsettling impression I get from him.

It's the way he's staring at me, I think. It's speculative, but more than that, it's hungry, vulture-like. In an effort to get him to stop, I actually respond to him: "Nice to meet you."

He smiles like he knows that's a lie, but it works: he drops his gaze again, keeps flipping through the file. "I gotta apologize for showing up so late. I've been running around all day, trying to piece together what I can about this case. It's—" he snorts, shaking his head ruefully—"it's crazy. Though I'm sure I don't need to tell _you_ that." I can hear his understated accent by now, the way the r's seem to disappear from the ends of words, the slightly nasal vowels paired with harsh consonants. Gotham born and bred, then.

I don't oblige him by taking the opening he's offering. Instead, I say, "I asked for counsel some time ago, Detective March. Any update on that?" My voice has a bit of a rasp to it. It's been a while since anyone brought me water—I assume my lack of cooperation irritates them.

He glances up at me again, thankfully briefly this time. "Your public defender ran into some trouble on the way here. It'll be a little longer. In the meantime, why don't you and I have a conversation." It's not a request. He sits down on the edge of the table and leans a little towards me, casually infringing on my space, though he continues to study the file. "Emma, you've been in witness protection for… about six months, is that right?"

I don't much care for his informal use of my name, but it's not like I can do anything about it. I don't say anything. I don't know what direction this line of question is going in, but I suspect it won't be very good.

He gives it a second, and when I don't answer, he moves on seamlessly. "At what point, would you say, did the Joker first make contact?"

I scratch my eyebrow and don't answer, training my gaze on the surface of the table. I don't want to meet his eyes, for fear that he'll see something ugly in mine and take issue with it.

He lets the silence stretch this time, and after several long seconds, he leans down a bit, turning his head sideways in an effort to catch my eye. Continuing to avoid eye contact _now_ will make me look guilty as hell, so I exhale softly through my nose, gathering, gathering my patience, then I look up.

He raises an eyebrow, waiting to see if this means I'm planning to talk, and prods, "Hm?", but I just stare back at him and try to look tired. It's not hard.

"These are the softball questions, Emma," he tells me.

I clear my throat and speak up. "Maybe so, but as long as you're withholding counsel, I'd rather not talk."

He narrows his eyes thoughtfully at me. "Why not? You're innocent, right? It'd be a big help if you could clear some stuff up for us."

This strikes me as transparent and terribly, terribly funny, though I try really hard not to show it, because I'm _trying_ not to come across as shit-eating and smarmy. If a jury views this tape, I want them to see exhaustion and resignation, not smug confidence. Still, I think the amusement is probably visible in my eyes, at least to March, as I respond carefully: "You have a file on me?" He just looks back at me, not answering, but the question was rhetorical, so I go on: "Read about what happened March of last year, and then ask yourself how much I should trust the police."

He smiles thinly in response to that. It doesn't reach his eyes. "No one is withholding counsel," he says after a minute, dropping his eyes to the file again and idly turning a page. "Your attorney will be here shortly. Emma, the doctor that treated you at St. Elizabeth's, Dr. Owens, do you remember her?" He barely pauses this time, just shoots me a brief glance before he gets to the heart of it: "Well, she said that she examined and treated you the best she could, but that you refused a rape kit. Why is that?"

There are about a dozen good answers to that question, ranging from _because I wasn't raped_ to _because it's none of your goddamn business, or hers, either,_ but I don't give him any of them. I recognize a trap when I see one. Instead, I go on the offensive, hoping that my sudden rush of anger reads as impatience: "Where is Commissioner Gordon?"

Detective March doesn't like this question—his frown in response is subtle, but I'm looking for it, and I've had a lot of practice reading faces. "The commissioner has bigger things to worry about."

I can't quite hide my surprise at this answer. "Bigger than a _Joker incident_?"

He turns it back around on me. "Why are you asking for him?"

I hesitate, because it's just occurred to me that I might be endangering Gordon, putting him under suspicion by showing a preference for him. "He's always been in charge of my cases before," I say eventually. "Seems weird that he's not around. Did something happen?"

"It's Gotham City," March says. "Something's always happening." He has a point there, but I narrow my eyes as he clears his throat and changes the subject again. He gestures at his neck, indicating roughly the spot where the bandage is on mine, and asks, "This, what's this?"

I know I'm supposed to stay quiet, but I can't resist. "That's your neck."

He gives me a look that I think is supposed to be a smile, but it looks a little more like he's imagining what I look like dead. After a second, he moves on: "You told the officers on the scene that Victor Zsasz had been there, at your house. When did you meet Mr. Zsasz?"

I'm not paying particularly close attention to the questions, busy putting some details in order. Undeterred by my lack of response, March asks, "What about Bethany Miller?"

He must take the look on my face, the slowly arching brow, as questioning, because he clarifies: "The girl on your couch. Allegedly Mr. Zsasz's victim. Did you know her?"

(The expression March takes for inquisitiveness is not. It's suspicion.)

"Gordon doesn't even know, does he?" I ask.

A flat silence follows. I'm watching March closely, observing how he reacts to this, and his mouth goes tight—but his eyes, weird and wide and unblinking, start to _shine_. All at once, he reminds me of a mad dog. I'm not as frightened by this as I should be. I've had some experience in the area—though, of course, I'd feel better if I _wasn't_ locked to a table.

"That's why I'm back in Gotham instead in some dinky little jail upstate," I continue, since he doesn't seem eager to fill the sudden silence. "This didn't happen under your jurisdiction. That's why you haven't gotten me a lawyer, that's why I haven't been charged with anything, that's why Jim Gordon doesn't know about this—I'm not even supposed to _be_ here." I narrow my eyes, more thoughtful than challenging, and tilt my head curiously. "Am I?"

March studies me for a moment, then smiles another of those quick, empty smiles, and glances at the file. He flips a few pages, then, without any visible change of expression, abruptly slams it shut. In his same casual tone, he tells me, "Commissioner Gordon has… made up his mind about you. In his view, you're a helpless victim. That's it."

"But _you're_ not so sure."

He eyes me. "I'm sure that you don't _act_ like a victim."

"What's _off_ about me? In your professional opinion, I mean," I add, with a hint of sarcasm I can't quite quell.

March slips off the edge of a table, back onto his feet. He keeps leaning close, but now, at a standing height, he has much more of a _looming_ quality—especially when he plants his hands, palms flat, on either side of mine, widening his stance. "You? Too calm. Not scared enough," he says, shrugging the question off and changing the subject: "Aside from the unfortunate incident with officers Willowes and Rodriguez, what reason do you have for not trusting the police?"

This feels like a trap. There's no _way_ it's not a trap. He's staring me down so intently that it's hard to meet his eyes, but I make myself hold his gaze, even as my jaw shifts, betraying my frustration at not being able to answer freely.

He doesn't seem to _really_ want my input, though—the way he pauses, it seems like it's more for effect than because he expects an answer, and then he's talking again: "I know the Gotham PD gets a bad rap, I mean, _I_ live here, too. I see it. Harassment, brutality? Beating confessions out of suspects? I'm not going to lie to you: that _does_ happen. You gotta understand, when you work for law enforcement in a city like this, you see a _lot_ of the same people in and out of jail. When you start to get to know them, you start to accept that the most effective way to deal with them is to hand out a measure of the pain that _they_ inflict on _others_."

 _Oh my god, this is_ _ **super**_ _interesting, tell me all about it._ I'm wise enough (and he's enough of an unknown to me) that I don't give voice to the sarcasm.

"The thing about that, though, the thing the average citizen doesn't realize is that they will _never_ have to fear us. We're here to _protect_ them, and by and large, we know the difference between _them_ and a scumbag. You know?"

He lifts one hand abruptly, making me flinch—just a flutter of the eyelids, a small little inhale through the nose, but I know he caught it, what with the way he's watching me. He doesn't comment, though—just reaches back and thumps his stomach with his knuckles once, twice. "It's a _gut thing_."

I know I shouldn't say anything. Sanctioned or not, I'm still under arrest and likely being recorded. The more I say, the more they can twist my words into an admission of guilt. Still—stung, perhaps, that he'd succeeded in startling me—I'm speaking before I can stop myself, exactly as I'm prone to do. "You're kind of a showman, huh? You know, you remind me of someone."

He pauses. I've put him off his flow, but he doesn't follow this rabbit trail, which is interesting, because I would think he'd jump at the chance to talk about the Joker. As it is, he just stands entirely still for a moment, like he's frozen in place. Then, he blinks once, pulls in a short breath through his nose, and says, as if I haven't interjected, "You want to know what my gut tells me about you?"

After a long, pointed pause, during which he does nothing but stare at me, waiting for me to do my part, I oblige him and ask, "What does your gut tell you about me?"

He straightens up finally, taking his hands off the table and resting them on his narrow hips. Quietly, he says, "It tells me that you're not innocent. That you're a liar. You've abused the protections Commissioner Gordon has offered you, and you know more than you're saying, and it's _my job_ —" he lifts a knobby wrist, puts his hand lightly to his chest—"to find out what you're hiding."

There's a pause of about ten seconds while I absorb this and he lets me, then he lifts his eyebrows encouragingly and adds, "You know, it's up to you, Emma. You decide how it goes from this point."

"You wanna know what _my_ gut tells me about _you_?" I ask, almost before he's done speaking.

I expect him to ignore me again, stay on-script. Instead, he looks at me with every appearance of patience and says, "Tell me."

I give it a few seconds, just for dramatic effect. "It tells me I can't trust you," I say eventually, mildly. "It tells me you're out to make a name for yourself and you don't care who you've got to sacrifice to do it. It's _also_ speculating that you watched too much Law and Order growing up, probably wanted to be Bobby Goren, am I right? Thing is, Goren was just a weirdo. He wasn't out of his mind."

I'm just a little surprised when March's creepy, intense stare gives way to laughter that looks genuine. It doesn't last long, just a couple of seconds, then fades to a grin. He studies me for a second, still smiling, then flips the binder closed and picks it up. "I'll give you some time to think things over," he says, and I nod, because as boring and uncomfortable as this room is, I think it'll be better without _him_ in it.

He passes closer to me on the way out than he did on the way in, and when he pauses next to me, I just have time to reflexively steel myself before his hand comes down to pat my shoulder, a lot more firmly than necessary, centering on the day-old (and therefore _extremely tender_ ) bruise there, a souvenir from my time with Victor.

Though my clenched teeth are sufficient to keep me from making a sound, I can't help but shrink away from the touch. I can't go far, and he just hits me again, once, then says, "Really, Emma. Think it over. We don't have to be enemies."

He leaves his hand resting on my shoulder for another moment, then finally, he goes, the door buzzing to release him from the room, then closing solidly behind him, leaving me—finally—alone.

I wait for a minute, waiting for the rippling pain to subside, then I sigh, leaning back in my chair—carefully, so as not to put any further pressure on the agitated bruise. March's involvement obviously isn't good news, but for now, I plan to stay optimistic. My experience with Jim Gordon tells me he's a wise man. March might have succeeded in keeping this story hushed up so far, but it'll break eventually—Gotham's citizens hate the Joker so much they can't resist reading about his latest misadventures, so the press is aggressive when there's a story to be found. Sooner or later, someone will talk, and Gordon will figure it out.

I just have to find a way to be okay until then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Detective March is some strange hybrid of Jake Gyllenhaal's characters Lou Bloom from Nightcrawler and Detective David Loki from Prisoners, both of which are excellent movies worth a watch (though the latter will make you feel a lot better about him than the former lol). He's also named after Ryan Gosling's character from The Nice Guys. Not because there's any similarity there whatsoever, just because I said so.
> 
> Chapters are shorter to start with, but as the action builds the word count will quickly get out of control, as it does. Love you guys, have fun reading this at work or school or wherever you're definitely not supposed to be reading it, I'll update again as soon as I can xoxo


	2. Chapter 2

I expect March to come back pretty quickly—half an hour, maybe an hour. I really don't see him as the kind of guy who's patient enough to let me stew for half a day.

I'm wrong. An officer came in shortly after March left, let me use the bathroom and gave me some more water (the good cop to March's bad cop, I imagine, though he didn't bother saying much to me), but that was two hours ago. Maybe three.

I might have fallen asleep for a little while in the interim, so it's hard to be sure.

All I know is that when the door behind me finally opens again and March returns, he's not how I expect him to be. I'm expecting the same put-on professionalism, underlaid by smugness and that weird wild glint in his eye, but I get none of that. Instead, as he reaches the table and leans over, fitting a key into the lock of my left-hand cuff and springing it open, I get the distinct sense that he's _seething_.

"What happened?" I ask, instantly alert, as he unlocks my other wrist, freeing me from the table. He doesn't answer, just pockets the keys and handcuffs me again immediately with his own pair. I'm not free, then—but we _are_ moving.

"Come with me," he says, confirming my guess as he takes my elbows and draws me up out of the chair. I obey in silence, too preoccupied with trying to figure out what this could mean to talk shit as he escorts me from the room.

_Gordon found out and March is moving me somewhere new to buy time_ , is my first thought, but I dismiss it almost immediately. March might be willing to keep things under wraps to get ahead, but he strikes me as too ambitious to engage in open insubordination.

_Okay, then maybe he's taking me_ _ **to**_ _Gordon,_ is the next idea, but… something's off. The officers we pass on the way down the hall are acting weird, a few keeping their heads down entirely, one or two just staring at me outright. The atmosphere is tense, weird.

Struck by a sudden thought, I look up at March and blurt, "The Joker's not… _here_ , is he?"

"Come on," March says, pulling a little harder on my elbow, and I fall silent again and pick up the pace.

It doesn't seem possible that the Joker could just take over a whole police station, even an older one like this place, but then, he seems to be a man of unlimited ability, so I steel myself for the prospect. We go through a door into a small office, and he's not there.

March lets me go just inside the door and points to the chair behind the desk. "Sit," he orders. Still playing along till I have some grasp of what's happening, I obey.

March closes the door, and I feel a prickle of nerves, which I combat immediately by scoping out my options. My legs are still free, I can use them to kick and fight as needed. March has a gun in a holster on his belt. I might be able to yank it free if he comes at me.

He comes closer, and I straighten up, ready to give him hell if I have to, but he stops at the desk, picking up a remote and then directing my attention towards a television, bolted up in the top corner of the room. "Watch," he says, and pushes a button.

The TV comes alive with a blare of static, and then cuts to a gray, unfocused image. After a second, the picture clears up: it's a street somewhere in Gotham, on a cloudy day, somewhere not in any of the rare nice neighborhoods. It seems like a perfectly ordinary scene, if a little grimy, with cars and people going about their days without seeming to be aware of the observer. The camera zooms slowly, slowly down the street, reaching its limit at a crosswalk some ways down the road, where it follows a person crossing the street. The picture is badly pixelated by now, and I can't tell who the person is.

The scene cuts. The next one is later, at night, so the visibility is worse. The perspective seems to be from a second story window or low rooftop, focused across the street as a yellow cab pulls to a stop on the curb. A person gets out of the cab, but because of the low light and the distance, they're impossible to make out. The camera follows the person until they disappear inside a skinny brick building nearby.

Another cut. This one is even more voyeuristic, shot through a window into a private residence, and this time, I can hear whoever's holding the camera breathing. There's nothing for a second, and then someone walks past the window—a woman I don't recognize, followed soon by someone I do: Jim Gordon.

I cover my mouth with my hand, trying to keep my horror at least _partially_ under-wraps.

He pauses in front of the window but he isn't looking out of it—and even if he was, with the light from the inside making the glass reflective, he wouldn't be able to see his silent stalker. He looks rumpled, tired. Off-screen, the woman is talking, and she sounds upset, though she isn't speaking loudly enough for me to make out her words. After a moment, he responds, looking earnest, and then moves towards her, disappearing from view of the window.

The picture fuzzes, and the scene changes again. Half-knowing what to expect doesn't help me feel less sickened by the new image on the screen. It's a shot of an anonymous room—chipped drywall, tile or linoleum floor. On the floor to the left, framed from the shoulders up, is Gordon, lying on his side, eyes closed, and I'm not sure if he's alive.

His face is an alarming shade of gray, his mouth is slack, his eyebrow crusted over with dried blood. His glasses are missing; somehow that's the thing that cuts the deepest.

The camera quivers, then settles, like it's being placed on a tripod, then, from the right side of the frame, a flutter of purple, and a pair of legs that presumably belong to the Joker enter the picture. Gloved hands appear at the knees, hitching up the pants clear of his ankles (exposing a pair of spectacularly hideous orange-and-plum patchwork socks in the process) and then he stoops and stretches out neatly on the floor, mirroring Gordon.

The paint is vivid and fresh, and the camera's quality is low enough that it smooths out some of the details of his features, making him look even less human and more monstrous than I'm used to. He props his head up on his hand and regards the camera, eyes glittering and mouth held tight, like he's trying not to smirk. "Ladies and gentlemen of Gotham," he says in greeting after a moment, then jerks his head towards Gordon. "My old buddy Jim would say hi, but he's indisposed right now, aren't you, Jimbo?"

He waits for a few seconds, and when he gets no response, he refocuses on the camera. "If he _was_ feeling a little more talkative, I bet I know what he'd say. He'd say…" The Joker pauses, licks his lips, looking thoughtfully downwards for a second, then resumes eye contact with the camera. "Let Emma Vane go."

My stomach drops. I can't stop myself: I'm already looking at March, gauging him for a reaction to this demand, so damning for me. He's watching me closely, but doesn't seem to want to engage—when I glance his way, he frowns, snaps his fingers irritably, and points at the TV. _Pay attention._

It's hardly the time to be spiteful and defiant. I look back at the screen. The Joker has paused, jaw held rigid and mouth parted slightly as he runs his tongue slowly along the back of his bottom lip. His eyes have gone hard and glazed over at the same time, like he's lost in a particularly ugly thought. This weirdness lasts for maybe five long seconds, then he draws a sharp breath and continues as though he'd never paused at all.

"He'd say, 'Help me out here, fellas.' He'd say, uhhh, that Miss Vane better be free within the next, oh, say, _twenty-four hours_. He'd say it'll be an _awful shame_ if she's not. He'd say that would be _it_ for him. He and I, well, we'd have to take a trip upstate." Slowly, but notably, the Joker's tone has been getting rougher and quicker-paced, and his stance, too, is tenser—instead of resting his head flirtatiously on his hand, he's straightened up, propped on his elbow and leaning threateningly ever-closer towards the camera. By now, his voice is a bark, the savagery of it making even _me_ flinch: "And once we got there, I'd have to _feed him feet first to a woodchipper!_ "

His face, contorted to a furious snarl as he delivered the threat, returns to its normal restful, calculating expression so quickly it makes my head spin. He stares thoughtfully at the camera for another moment before popping his tongue in the corner of his mouth. "Twenty-four hours," he says again, and then hauls himself to his feet so that, once again, his legs are the only part of him visible in the frame. He steps over Gordon's prone body, muttering "Come on, Jim" as he disappears from the picture, and after a second, Gordon disappears from view, dragged roughly out of frame.

The shot lingers on the gray room, now empty, for another few seconds before cutting to static.

March reaches up to snap the TV off. Tone icy, he asks, "You gonna keep denying that you're an accomplice?"

I don't answer the question, because it's stupid. Instead, sharply, I ask, "When did you get this tape?"

March crosses his arms over his waist. "Why, you want to know when you can expect to go free?"

"I want to get an idea of what shape Jim Gordon might be in right now," I retort, the healing cut on my hand suddenly throbbing under its bandage. "In my _considerable_ experience, the longer a person spends with the Joker, the more injuries they accumulate, so the more recent, the better." _Not that he looked particularly good to start with_ , I think with a pang. I bury the thought.

"Showed up at GCN about two hours ago, they passed it on to us," March says dismissively, then jabs a finger at the TV and asks in the same breath, "What do you know about this?"

"Wh—" I start, then shake my head and look incredulously at him. " _Nothing_."

He's shaking his head, bracing his hands on the desk in front of me and leaning closer. "By your own account to Sheriff Watson in Warren County, the Joker was with you till yesterday evening. Commissioner Gordon was last seen around lunchtime _today_ , by his wife. Now, you're telling me the Joker was with you directly leading up to the abduction and he didn't say a word?"

Despite knowing that looking at crazy men like they're crazy is never a smart move, I can't help myself: my eyes widen a fraction. "Detective, I don't mean to be rude, but—have you _met_ the Joker?"

March straightens up and looks down at me disdainfully. "No, why? Is he funny, charming, _cute_?"

"He's _secretive_ ," I say emphatically, ignoring his mocking tone. I shouldn't be talking about my relationship with the Joker, shouldn't say a _word_ , but this is bigger than me and my safety now. Jim Gordon, the one person who's consistently given a damn about me since all this started, the one person who's done his best to keep me safe, is in serious trouble, and it's at least in part due to my involvement with the Joker. If I can do anything that might help save him, anything at all…

I look March earnestly in the eye and add, "Look, even if I _was_ his accomplice, he wouldn't have told me anything about _this_. From what I saw last December, he tells his people things on a need-to-know basis. Adding to that: he knows how I feel about Commissioner Gordon. He knows I would never have gone along with something like this."

"He seems to know a lot about you," March says sharply.

"It would take someone a lot dumber than he is to miss the fact that I just _happen_ to care for the only person in this city who cares about _me_ ," I say, more than a little pointedly.

March is already talking over me. "If this isn't about you—if you're not _with him_ —why is he demanding your release?"

I sigh, closing my eyes for a moment, shaking my head. "He plays games," I say tiredly.

"Games, what kind of games?"

I glance up at him again. "Games like framing me for a train bombing, so I'd end up in jail with him and the cops on his payroll, maybe? Or games like threatening to murder a high-ranking cop if I'm not released, so now all of Gotham thinks I'm _something_ to him? Detective, he's _playing_ you. This is not _about_ me."

"Oh," says March, his heavy sarcasm doing a poor job of disguising his anger, "then you won't mind if we refuse his demand."

"Actually, I do."

"Big fuckin' surprise."

"I _mind_ because _he will kill Gordon if you don't_. I'm not even _supposed_ to be under arrest, you practically _said so_ , so just let me go, and I'll find him and try—"

March's hands are suddenly braced against the desktop again in front of me, and he looms over me, teeth bared in contempt as he snaps, "You know, you're full of shit."

I stop talking, try hard not to glare back at him, and fail, badly.

"Is this how the two of you have been doing it, all this time?" he continues. "Him playing Big Bad Wolf, you acting so scared and delicate and in need of rescue when the police show up? You know, even the dirty cops in this town would have a hard time saying no to being your white knight," he says, eyes crawling all over me, "with those big eyes and fresh bruises—just some miserable little thing who's had the misfortune to get tossed around like a ragdoll by that _monster_ , huh?" He meets my eyes again and scoffs. "Please. You're no innocent. I can tell by the way you're looking at me right now."

"You must be a really shitty detective if this is your MO—coming up with a story then bending and _breaking_ the evidence to make it fit. Supposed to be the other way around, genius." I've never been good at watching my mouth when I'm angry, even when I _really should_.

March's mouth curls in a little smile. "Keep it up. I'm sure your nasty attitude will get you _plenty_ of sympathy from the judge."

"Hey, quick question, are you more interested in threatening me or saving Gordon? Because I find it weird that I'm apparently the _only person in this room_ who gives a shit about him."

He jabs his pointer finger into the desk top. "We're gonna find him—" jabs again—"we're gonna save him, because he's _one of ours_ , okay? That's our _job,_ we _owe him that_. You? You're going to be sitting in jail, _where you belong_ , the whole time, and when this is over, you're going on trial for aiding and abetting a fucking murdering terrorist, how does that sound?"

I'm so angry at this point that I'm having trouble thinking straight, so when March's eyes suddenly go flinty and he freezes, head held at a slightly awkward angle, I don't immediately realize why. I'm about ready to start spitting venom again when I hear the faint sound of yelling, and someone not far away yells "Jesus _Christ!_ "

My eyes meet March's, and if there's mutual loathing to be found there, there's also an identical expression of grim understanding. I'm rising even before he motions me to, "C'mon," and he takes my elbow, not gently but with no vindictive roughness, either. He steers me around the desk, to the entry, then pushes me against the wall beside the door and holds me there as he opens it and carefully peers out.

With the door open, we both hear it more clearly: some confused shouting from a few rooms over, a man's voice cutting over the rest, " _What the fuck is that_?"

Around this time, I notice something out of the corner of my eye, and turn to look directly at the ancient ceiling vent. Coils of… _something_ are leaking out of it, an ugly yellow-green gas. My heart goes perfectly still for a moment, then I'm clutching hard at March's arm with my cuffed hands. He looks at me, annoyed at first, then he follows my eyes and his brows rush down as he sees what I see and the realization kicks in.

"Come on," he says, "now, _now_." I don't need any encouragement. I go with him, out into the hallway, letting him guide me through the maze of the police station.

Among the yelling and shouts of dismay, I can hear coughing and hacking starting up from all sides. I don't really want to go any further, towards thicker gas and press of panicked people, but I don't know this place, don't know where the exits are, and even if I _did_ , it's a police station—the odds of me being able to leave anywhere other than through the front door without authorization aren't good. I follow March for now, until a better plan presents itself.

Meanwhile, thoughts are running haywire through my head: _why would he bother pulling off that whole abduction and demanding my release if he was just going to gas the police station I'm being held in? What sort of game is he playing? Is this even_ _ **him**_ _? …no, it's got to be. Too much of a coincidence otherwise—but how the hell is he managing to gas a_ _ **police station**_ _? More importantly, what's his angle? Is this supposed to free me, or kill me?_ If I had to guess, I wouldn't think the Joker would let me die so casually, not anymore, but then again, his whole _thing_ is unpredictability, and if this is another part of his plan—I die, the GPD defaults on their side of the trade as a result, so the Joker gets to kill Gordon and do God knows what else in retaliation well within the rules of his own game—then this really could be it.

I don't really believe it, but then we cross from the back halls into the bull pen, where people are stumbling and coughing and the air is tinged yellow from whatever is leaking from the vents, and I'm suddenly much less sure of my own safety. March is covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve, which seems like a good move, but my hands are cuffed and he's holding my left wrist with his spare hand, so it's not really in the cards for me, and as he stops just inside the bull pen I start to feel it: a stinging in my eyes, a sensation like a long fingernail scratching at the back of my throat.

"Robertson, what's going on?" March demands of a skinny redfaced woman hunkered behind a nearby desk, but she's coughing too hard to answer, just shakes her head at him. He turns his attention to another man stumbling towards us who looks to be in marginally better shape. "Estevez!"

"Whole place is filling up," the guy says, and then pauses to brace against a column and hack his lungs out.

March is shaking his head in anger and disbelief, but the first thing to come out of his mouth, almost to himself, is "We gotta get the prisoners out."

Estevez recovers, shoots March an incredulous look, and says, "Fuck that," and straightens up, starting to move past us—presumably towards an exit.

March, to my surprise, lets me go and moves to intercept him, and he's not messing around: he grabs Estevez by the collar and slams him back against a column. "Listen, you piece of shit, _do your fucking job_."

"Oh, _I'm_ the piece of shit?" demands Estevez, but before either man can say anything else, they're both seized by coughing fits. It'd be funny if I wasn't _also_ currently having a fit of my own—I've made use of my slightly-freer hands and am covering my mouth with my sleeve, but it's not helping much. Besides, I've caught sight of something from the corner of my watering eye.

Several men have entered the station, gas masks strapped over their faces— _faces, not clown masks,_ I note _—_ and leading them is what might be the biggest man I've ever seen. I see him stop, facing me, and stand silent for a moment before lifting his hand and pointing directly at me.

By this point, I'm getting lightheaded—optimistically just because of all the coughing, more realistically because the gas is more than just an irritant. It takes me a second to realize that Detective March has taken my arm again, and then—it's hazy—the big man is stampeding towards us, there's gunfire, March yanks hard on my arm and, like a child, I lose my balance and fall square on my ass. March is pulling on my shoulder, trying to drag me to my feet with one hand and draw his gun with the other, but before he can get it out of the holster, the big guy reaches him and throws a haymaker.

March goes down. The guy turns towards me, and lightning-quick I think _vigilantes here to bust me out for Gordon because they know the cops won't do it? Or just vigilantes here to kill me because they know the Joker wants me for some reason_ —and I can't decide whether to move towards him or away from them. The gas gets me before I can make a decision, sparking a rib-bruising, chest-racking coughing fit, one that shows no sign of subsiding soon. Between gas-induced tears and just coughing too hard to see, my vision is fucked, so I don't really see it happening, but I feel it—a strong hand grabs me, pulls me to my feet so quickly that I have no say in the matter, then he's got me in a fireman's carry and we're moving.

I think I've lost a little time, because it feels like just a second before I'm dropped down onto something hard, and shortly thereafter, something presses against my face, around my mouth. It's some kind of mask, and, wary of being _really_ drugged, I lash out, still coughing, but someone grabs my hands (uncuffed now—now I _know_ I blacked out; I don't remember that happening), and if the grip wasn't familiar enough, the playfully-scolding voice that accompanies it certainly is: "Ah, ah ah. _Behave_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _rolls up several days late with starbucks and this update_
> 
> that March guy is kind of a bastard, huh.
> 
> Hey, thanks for all the nice comments and kudos! I really like y'all. Memorial Day weekend got to me (I say that like I did something productive and didn't just drink and play Uncharted 4 the whole time), but I'm planning to get on some kind of weekly update scheddy, hopefully putting out new chapters late Saturday night/early Sunday morning like I did with Metamorphosis so y'all don't have to deal with never knowing when the next one will come. I'm also sorry for the lack of Joker/Emma interaction, I'll fix that soon. Till next time!


	3. Chapter 3

I freeze, and consequently get a lungful of whatever he's pumping through the mask. It eases the pain and irritation in my lungs and throat considerably, so while I still don't fully trust that the mask is _just_ giving me oxygen, I take a few more breaths anyway, and as the stinging in my eyes fades, my vision gradually clears. At length, I can actually make things out.

I've been dumped on a gurney in the back of an ambulance, which is now moving, carrying us away from the embattled police station. There's no sight of the big guy that presumably brought me here—instead, the Joker is perched beside me, holding the oxygen mask to my face with sardonic delicacy. My eyes move past the hand in my immediate line of sight, trailing up his scarred, ashen arm, mostly bared by the set of blue, short-sleeved scrubs he's adorned for the occasion (because of _course_ he has). He hasn't bothered to strip the face paint (because of _course_ he hasn't), but really, the only thing that sort of throws me is that he's got one of those weird mirrors strapped to his head, the kind I've only ever seen on physicians in period dramas. If I had less on my mind, I might ask him where the hell he found one of those here in the twenty-first century.

As it is, my hand shoots out as soon as I recognize him, grasping tight at the front of his scrubs. He raises an eyebrow, glances pointedly down at my whitening knuckles, then looks back up at me, more than a little smug.

"Where's—" I start, and that's as far as I get before my throat betrays me, and I gag and cough, still feeling the remnants of the gas.

" _E_ asy, _e_ asy," he singsongs, shifting closer, taking a knee beside the gurney and resting his arm along the edge, using his free hand to brush a few curls out of my eyes. "That whole _station_ was… chock- _full_ of chlorine gas," he adds, pulling a disapproving face, like he has no idea whose idea _that_ was. "I was you, I'd just sit tight and breathe fresh air for a while. Wring out those lungs, y'know? You don't want to be out of the game before it even _starts_ , do you?"

On several occasions throughout the course of my acquaintance with the Joker, I've had to admit to myself that he's probably right. It never gets any easier. Even so, if the air the mask is pumping to me hasn't made me feel drowsy or strange yet, it's likely really just oxygen, meant to get me back on my feet, so I think it best to swallow back the burning questions, save them until I can actually _speak_. I loosen my vice-like grip on his shirt and, not taking my eyes off him, I just breathe, slowly.

The Joker sits back on his heels and regards me through a lazy half-squint, like he's watching for any signs of rebellion, but I'm not about to show him any—if he's being nice enough to give me a little bit of recovery time, I'm going to take it. After a second, his eyes shift sideways, then back to me long enough to grip my hand and guide it up to the mask beside his, and reading his intent, I tighten my fingers to hold the mask so he can let go. He turns then, and I watch as he rummages messily through the shelves lining the walls of the ambulance, unflinching as he sends probably hundreds of dollars' worth of delicate equipment clattering to the floor.

After a moment, he finds what he's apparently looking for—a blood pressure monitor—and turns back to me, pulling impatiently on the sleeve of my hoodie. I start to remove it without a fight, partially because I've been wearing the thing for over twenty-four hours now and it's starting to feel a little stale and partially because, as bizarre as it is, the Joker wanting to check my blood pressure is about ten time preferable than the Joker trying to jab me with needles, so if it keeps him from getting up to worse things, I'm willing to indulge him.

His eyes flicker to my arm as I start to wiggle free of the sleeve. It's an awkward job with only one hand at my disposal, but for some reason the oxygen mask doesn't have a band so I can secure it to my head, and I'm not about to ditch it. He watches me struggle for just a second, then giggles, once, through his nose, and grabs the jacket at the shoulder, stripping it off my arm in one quick, none-too-gentle motion.

I let him take over, letting my arm go limp and watching attentively over the mask as he straps the cuff above my elbow, then takes my wrist in hand and lifts till my arm is roughly at the level of my chest, then he holds it there as he pumps at the monitor's bulb. He watches the gauge, lips pursed attentively, and absently, still holding my arm up, he taps my wrist with his rough fingers, over and over at the pulse point, drumming along to some beat that only he is privy to.

And I must be feeling a little better, because now, especially given the silence between us and the proximity forced on us by the confined space in the back of the ambulance, I'm starting to really _notice_ him. The paint has been rubbed off at a solitary spot on his jaw and his skin is showing through, and I can see the black of his stubble growing in just beneath it. He'll need to shave soon. His ear above it is masked by the paint, but I can see that it's looking a little misshapen, a little swollen, likely the result of an unexpected encounter with someone's fist. I hope, viciously, that it was Jim Gordon's.

It's a reminder that I have questions that need to be answered, but before I can try to speak again, the Joker sighs abruptly and unstraps the cuff from my arm. "Well, your _blood_ pressure's a little high," he informs me, giving me a look that's vaguely disappointed. I respond with a skeptical scowl.

_Yeah, the chlorine gas_ _ **might**_ _have something to do with that,_ I think, but there's not much point in saying it. Instead, very softly, trying to put as little strain on my vocal cords as I can, I say without bothering to move the mask, "I've been under some stress." I'm pleased to note that although my throat still feels a little raw, a little irritated, I can get the words out without coughing.

"Ah. About that." The Joker leans a little closer over me, his elbow making a soft dent in the pad of the gurney next to my hip. He stares over me, frowning as he gathers his thoughts, then he turns his speculative eyes to meet mine. "I thought _you_ said you weren't going to jail for me."

The not-question startles a laugh out of me, which turns into a cough as it proves a little too taxing for my injured lungs. After I recover, taking renewed care to pace myself, I say, "Not there _for_ you. There _because_ of you."

He twists a dismissive hand in the air, _to-ma-to to-mah-to_ , and reaches up to the mask, his fingers pressed over mine. "Ah, well. Same result either way. _So_." He slides the mask away from me, bringing it towards his own face, but before pressing it over his mouth, he glances sideways at me, so casual as to be almost sly, and asks, "Wanna play _doctor_?"

"Is that not what we're doing already?" I reply before I can stop myself, despite the fact that I need to focus on Gordon and the victims at the station and everything else that matters here, because the Joker _flirting_ always throws me off-balance, compels me to intentionally mistake his meaning, to answer him head-on to cover up my unease.

He hums beneath the mask, a deviously arched eyebrow belying the noncommittal sound, and the hand at my wrist slides up until his fingertips rest on the sensitive skin on the inside of my elbow. I ignore the goosebumps shooting up my arm, in full view now that my jacket's gone, and turn my attention to what matters. My change in demeanor catches his eye, and, holding his gaze, I ask, "Where is Jim Gordon?"

Beneath the mask, he makes a hissing noise of disapproval; his eyes narrow. His answer, when it comes, is edged with exasperation: "If I _give_ you that information, what're you gonna _do_ with it?"

"Nothing right now," I answer honestly, coughing a little, because there's still some respiratory irritation that talking is exacerbating. The Joker rolls his eyes and places the mask back over my mouth. "Thanks," I say after recovering from the little fit, then, using the arm he's got a hand on, I reach over and grab the collar of his scrubs again, drawing him close—this time not out of panicked confusion, but determination.

He obligingly goes along with me, half-rising from his crouch beside the gurney so he can sit on the edge, simultaneously curling the fingers of his spare hand alongside my opposite hip. This new position is intimate, his head bent close over mine: his breath fogs up the outside of the mask. At this limited distance, it doesn't make sense to look anywhere but at his eyes, but even so, the eye contact doesn't come easy.

I take a steadying breath, loosen my grip on his shirt now that I've got him close, and run my hand down his arm instead, mirroring him and curling my fingers around the bared inside of his elbow—touching skin that feels surprisingly soft, for him.

"You could've gone after anyone," I say, almost whispering, and he lifts his eyebrows attentively. "The Mayor. Senator Meyer. Hell, you could've even nabbed Bruce Wayne, though you'd be running the risk that the city would just tell you to keep him. But you picked Gordon— _Gordon_ , the only person I actually _care_ about. This is about _me_ , at least partially."

The Joker wrinkles his nose. "A little self- _centered_ , aren't we there, Em?"

I don't fall for it. "Don't you think I deserve to know at least a _little_ bit?"

He breathes quick out of his nostrils, leans a little closer. "People don't ever just _deserve_ things, Emma; we've been over this."

" _I_ do," I argue, refusing to break eye contact. "After all we've been through? _I_ am not _people_. What's going on?"

I can see him thinking it over, eyes half-glazed, drawing his tongue contemplatively along behind his bottom lip, and I see it too when he comes to a conclusion. He twitches his head, almost like he's resigning himself to something, which I think is a good sign, then he leans forward a couple of inches and plants a noisy kiss on the mask over my mouth. He looks me in one eye, then the other, close enough that I can see the fine little lines in the hollows under his eyes, the black paint sunk into them—at his proximity, it highlights them rather than masking them.

Then he leans back, his arm sliding out from beneath my fingers, and rises, tilting his head at an angle and hunching his shoulders to accommodate the low roof of the ambulance, then bangs twice on that roof with a fist. The ambulance screeches to a stop—a lazy sway is his only concession to the abrupt movement—and then he flicks his fingers at me, _up, up_.

Tentatively, I place the mask to the side—my lungs still don't quite feel a hundred percent, but I think I'll be okay—and stand, the low ceiling of the ambulance posing less difficulty for me. The Joker, head tilted sideways, closes one eye and looks intently at me through the other, then clicks his tongue and moves towards the back of the ambulance. "I'm not gonna tell you where he is, Em," he says, forcing the door open and gesturing towards me, _come here_.

I go towards him a little warily. This truce has been going on for a while; it's just about time for him to do something awful, but I don't see that I have much of a choice—it's not like I've got anywhere I can run. (It's not like running from him has ever done me any good.) He continues, squatting down as he pushes the other door open: "I'm not gonna tell you where he is," he repeats, lilting the words, "but I'll tell you what I _will_ do. I'll give you the opportunity to _save_ him."

I stop dead even as he reaches up and grabs my wrist. "That sounds like a trap."

" _No-_ ooo," he croons in a persuasive, high-pitched tone that makes me sure I'm right on the money. "Cross my heart. _So_." He pulls me forward, quickly and forcefully enough that I barely manage to keep my balance as he essentially tosses me out of the ambulance—I land on my feet, have to brace my hands against the asphalt to keep from falling on my face, then I shoot him a betrayed glare over my shoulder. He's crouched casually on the ambulance floor above me, arms braced against the doors, and before I can start swearing at him, he says, "You _wan_ na save Jim—then go to South Channel Park, near the train stop at Laurel Street and Ryders, tomorrow at noon."

My anger morphs instantly into fearful disbelief. "Wait," I say, struggling to my feet, "you're not _leaving_ me here—?"

" _Ohhh_ , you're a resourceful girl," the Joker says, pulling one door shut. "You'll be _fine_."

"No, I _won't_ ," I say, risking a look around and feeling my stomach drop as I realize that things are worse than I thought. "Joker, this is the _Narrows_ —"

He slams the second door, cutting me off. I hear his hyena cackle for a moment before the ambulance screeches off, leaving me stranded in the Narrows with nothing but the clothes on my back.

_Fuck._

"Oh, laugh it up, you _dick!_ " I shout after the ambulance before I can think better of making a spectacle of myself in the Narrows. Fortunately, he chose an empty, quiet alleyway to ditch me in, and after waiting on edge for a moment, I decide no one around is interested to come snooping. I'm okay—for now.

Of course, given my location, that might not remain the case for long, so I quickly duck behind a dumpster and crouch there, out of view of the street. Then I try to quell the rising panic and force myself to come up with a plan.

Thanks to the GCPD, I have no wallet and no cell phone. Thanks to the Joker, I have no jacket, just the black cotton tank I've been wearing for way too long now and the pair of black pants I quickly threw on shortly before the police arrived at my house last night. The rain from yesterday's storm has recently let up, and it's not particularly cold, but I can tell by the purplish cast to the sky that it's twilight, and it's September, so the night's probably about to get a lot chillier. _At least I have shoes this time,_ I think, eyeing the heavy black boots I'd laced onto my feet before leaving the house last night, feeling like it'd be better to have them and not need them than the other way around. Given the deep puddles and broken glass littering the streets of the Narrows, it feels like a win (and at the moment, I need a win).

_What do I do, what do I do, what do I do?_

Okay. I'm in the Narrows—though I don't know exactly where—and the Joker wants me to meet him on South Channel Island tomorrow at noon. Theoretically, if I started walking now, I could be there with time to burn, but we're talking two bridges and like, a thousand blocks, and even if I was brave enough to cross half of Gotham on foot in the middle of the night… I haven't slept, _really_ slept, in about thirty-six hours.

(Really, all I want right now is a safe place to rest, and _this_ —crouched in an alleyway behind a dumpster, in the most dangerous neighborhood in the city, without anything to keep me warm—isn't it.)

I could find the nearest pawn shop or 7/11, beg to use the phone, and call the cops. It's an option, and not the worst one I've got, but that would ensure I was locked in a holding cell for the foreseeable future, and I get the distinct feeling that the Joker is testing me with the opportunity (however legitimate) to save Gordon. If I miss the meeting, Gordon might as well be dead.

It's rare that I regret being as socially isolated as I am, but I'm kicking myself for it at the moment. If I had friends, family, hell, even an awkward _coworker_ I could feasibly call up for a place to stay and ten bucks, my life would be _so_ much easier right now.

I bring my legs up, wrap my arms around them, and bury my face in my knees. _What do I do?_

The idea comes to me slowly. _I know someone. Someone who's not the Joker, or Gordon. Someone who might have some idea of how to help._

I lift my head, staring at the sick-stained brick wall opposite me. _Yeah, but how the hell could I even get a hold of him?_ It's not like I've got a cell number for one of Gotham's most wanted.

_But then, neither did the cops, back in the day._

It's an idea—a shitty one, but still better than any other option I can think of.

_So. I gotta get him._

Before I can talk myself out of it, I struggle to my feet and start briskly towards the mouth of the alleyway. This is the Narrows, full of the kind of people that can smell fear, so I face front and walk like I'm supposed to be here. It seems to work, at least for now, because although there are plenty of people milling around, none of them seem to take particular interest in me.

It isn't long before I spot a bodega, and duck inside. The guy watching the news behind the counter glances up at me, then, deciding I'm not out to pull a gun on him or steal anything, returns his attention to the television screen.

I look around for a few minutes, but despite my best efforts, I can't find anything I can use. Finally, impatient with my browsing, the clerk calls out to me: "Anything I can help you with, sweetheart?"

_Well. Not ideal, but since I'm not making progress alone_ … I approach the counter, flash a brief, mechanical smile, and say, "Yeah, hi, I'm… looking for lighter fluid?"

The guy looks at me for a second, brow hitched high. Then, he shrugs, reaches under the counter, and pulls out a container of generic lighter fluid, setting it in front of me. "Buck fifty."

_Well, that's entirely reasonable_. The problem is, I have no money, and shops in the Narrows don't exactly operate on credit. I think hard for a few seconds, trying to figure out how I'm going to talk my way through this, trying not to notice the growing suspicion on the clerk's face, when my attention is suddenly called by the news report playing on the little TV on the counter.

_That's my face,_ I think at first, surprised, then, _oh_ , _shit, that's my face._

It's a three-year-old photo, the one on the college ID I had in my junior year. "—after an attack on the station, resulting in two deaths," the newscaster is saying. "This came merely hours after the Joker broadcasted a video demanding Miss Vane's release in exchange for the return of city Commissioner Gordon. It's not currently known whether the Joker had a hand in the attack on the station, or if another party is now involved. Citizens should be advised that while Miss Vane herself is unarmed and not considered dangerous, she is most likely in the company of the police station assailants…"

It's too much to hope that the bodega guy doesn't notice the news report, especially after it had seized my attention so thoroughly, and I glance quickly at him to see that he'd been watching the screen, as well.

His eyes slide towards me, narrowed, not quite hostile, not yet. "Hey—" he starts.

And I grab the lighter fluid, snatch a lighter from the display on the counter, and bolt.

I hear him yelling, and around the time I reach the door I hear the clear, threatening sound of a shotgun racking, but he's not going to shoot, not when I'm so close to the stock on display in the front windows, which is definitely more valuable than a dollar can of lighter fluid. I'm flying anyway, fueled by fear and adrenaline, and after half a second I'm out the door and he misses his chance.

I keep moving with no particular destination, just determined to keep a solid distance between me and the bodega guy. I hear more yelling from behind me, but nobody cares to stop me—in fact, I hear a few mocking calls from across the street, a couple of local toughs jeering at the bodega guy for his predicament. I hold the lighter fluid protectively under one arm, weave past the occasional passerby, and stay closer to the curb than the yawning mouths of dark alleyways.

Even after the sound of shouts subsides, I keep going, knowing that the guy's likely to report me to the cops the second he gives up on catching me. Now that I have some semblance of a plan, I don't want to get picked up by the PD again, so I run until my body's warm in the chilly air and, despite the fact that I'm in pretty good shape from evening runs up at the farmhouse, breathing is starting to feel painful.

Eventually, I slow down, but I don't stop, because I'm looking for something. Eventually, I find it in a man leaving a tall residential building just in front of me—he flings the door open wide, and then I'm jogging up the short stretch of stairs past him, catching the door before it can close and slipping inside. It's a project building in the Narrows, so it's entirely possible that the door wouldn't have locked behind him anyway, but I'm not taking chances.

I head up.

The building smells like piss and cabbage, and on my way up I pass not one, not two, but _three_ separate junkies blissed out in the stairwells, but since they pretty much ignore me, I just step over their outstretched legs and move on. By the time I reach the roof access, eight stories up, it's hurting to breathe again.

Then I push open the door and take a relieved breath. The air in the Narrows is none too fresh, but it's a damn sight better than the stink inside the building. I look carefully for evidence of anyone else, but nobody's around—I imagine the appeal of coming up here to shoot up waned somewhat when a terrifying man-bat started lurking among the rooftops of Gotham.

I was planning to take a risk and just gather assorted debris on the roof, but I get lucky—someone, probably a ways back, dragged an oil drum up here, and since then people have apparently used it as a trash can, because there's a variety of cardboard and junk mail (and the less pleasant mass of rotting food and old syringes) inside. I squirt the debris down with the lighter fluid, then use a flattened wine box to light it all up.

The blaze catches on fast. It shouldn't catch the attention of the police, or anyone on ground level, but if there's someone on the island who's, say, moving from rooftop to rooftop, maybe after monitoring police chatter of an Emma Vane sighting in the Narrows, there's a chance he could see it. Now I just have to wait and pray.

I sit against the air conditioning unit, knees drawn up to my chest, chilly but not trusting the dubious mass in the oil drum enough to get close to it for warmth. Maybe twenty minutes go by, and then I feel it—a change in the air; a prickling feeling that I'm being watched.

I look around and spot the bank of shadows at the edge of the roof. I wait until I'm pretty sure I can distinguish his mass against the natural dark, and only then do I say, "So did Gordon ever tell you I was sorry for hitting you that one time?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy June! Next chapter, we'll be checking in with the Joker, see what he gets up to while Emma is consorting with his nemesis. I'm hoping to consistently update on Saturday nights/Sunday mornings from now on. Till next time!


	4. Chapter 4

After dropping Emma off, the Joker travels deeper into the city. As the ambulance trundles along, he strips the scrubs taken from a hapless nurse, trading them for the nondescript black street clothes he'd been wearing before he and the boys had jacked the ambulance. He has a black cap and a stretchy black winter mask, the kind that covers his face from nose to the base of his throat, but he doesn't bother putting them on right away—instead, he finds the vaseline stashed in the ambulance, slathering it on his face and then using chunks of paper towels to wipe it roughly away. Huge patches of red and black and white come with it, and he keeps scraping at his face till the towels come away clean. Then, he dons the mask, tucks his lank hair tight into the cap, then bangs the roof of the ambulance— _stop_ —and hops out of the back before it's even fully stopped moving. He's antsy from being cooped up; wants to walk the rest of the way.

The mask isn't as eye-catching as one might think, despite the fact that it's only September, not quite cold enough to justify it. This is Gotham City, after all, full of wannabe fashionistas, no look too wild as long as they get the attention they're after (the other day, he'd seen a guy in _satyr legs_ , hooves and all, no kidding)—which, given Gotham's contrary nature, naturally has the opposite effect. Gawk at an outrageous outfit on the rail and you might as well be a _tourist._ All that to say: a ski mask on the street at night is nothing to the citizens of this fine city, and sure, maybe the cops would find it suspicious and try giving him shit on a slow night, but again: this is _Gotham City_. There are no slow nights. The Joker himself sees to that more often than not.

He feels good. It's midtown, so there are a lot of people out despite the hour, and he loves the feeling of them flowing around him without giving him a second glance. He makes a conscious effort to lower his shoulders and straighten his spine, moving like a normal person, but if he didn't want to, he probably wouldn't have to—the people are too preoccupied with their own little spheres to look closely, to worry about the mask, to take note of the slight limp and think too hard about where he might have gotten it.

The leg is better. It's not quite at a hundred percent, of course, but it's not infected, and it's healing pretty quickly. Standard practice for the Joker is just to ignore injuries to the best of his ability, aside from cleaning them out and changing bandages—"taking it easy" isn't something he really _does_ —and it seems to work more often than not. If he bothered to believe in something higher than himself, he'd think the speed at which he heals (and his good health in general) is recompense for the long, frustrating, frequently agonizing months he endured while his severed face grew back together, but that's ridiculous, of course. There's no give-and-take, no trade happening. Like everything else, this is just happenstance.

He thinks about Emma as he passes through the busy shopping district, laughing softly to himself. She's always such a card, always so _dismayed_ to find herself a couple of steps behind him. It's nothing to be particularly ashamed of, he hasn't yet met the person who can quite keep up with the sharp, erratic movements of his mind (well, except for Mr. Tall, Dark, and Nonverbal, he guesses, maybe, _sometimes_ ), but she's consistently in such a rush to catch up, her small hand grasping at his collar like she had a chance in hell of shaking the truth out of him. It's endearing, the kind of forwardness she tries to get away with _now_ compared to _then_. He looks forward to ripping the rug out from under her, watching her struggle for balance that won't come.

He wonders if Batman is jealous yet, that the Joker has spent so much time, lavished so much attention on this little nobody. Probably not. He's probably too busy worrying about the "civilian cost" the Joker's games with Emma have run, probably up and pacing this very minute, fretting over the theft of his pet commissioner. Well, maybe he _should_ be jealous. Maybe the Joker will knock him down in the ranking of his affections, put Emma in his place.

…ah, who's he kidding. Emma is fun ( _Emma is a_ _ **lot**_ _of fun,_ he thinks, the cheap polyester of the mask stretching and scraping along his scars as he grins beneath it, thinking of their the _amorous_ encounter at the farm house), but she's not the _challenge_ Batman is, has never been. She's not a player in the game; she's a piece—a _valuable_ one, to be sure, one that sometimes manages to surprise even _him_ , but still just a piece. Batman, on the other hand: he's the only one the Joker's ever wanted to play this game opposite, and that makes him unique, irreplaceable…

… _and a withholding son of a bitch,_ the Joker thinks, a little grumpily, as he turns a corner and cuts through an alley, heading towards a more rundown section of the neighborhood. So far, Batman has shown neither hide nor hair of himself, which is… irritating. The fracas up at the farmhouse hadn't seemed to draw his attention, _fine_ , it was a little out of his jurisdiction, but it appears no one saw him after the Joker nabbed Gordon, either. Now, he's hamstrung an entire branch of the police department, and still _nothing_ from Batman? It's insulting, really.

He feels something like electricity run down his spine, the thought emerging (and not for the first time) that the Batman is bowing out, has finally had enough, is yielding the game to him. _Ridiculous_ , the Joker thinks with a swift, feral shake of his head. He would _never_ —and if he even tries, the Joker will just scale up, up, _up_ , until things get so bad that Batman can't resist the keening cries of the city in pain and _has_ to come back. The Joker knows him; he _knows_ he'll never abandon this place. It's a significant factor among the many that make Gotham the perfect playground.

His train of thought trails off as his destination comes into view. _What a difference a block or two makes in this place_ —the bright streetlamps and glass storefronts have yielded now to glass-studded streets and hideous concrete buildings. Ugliness is like a toxic mold in Gotham, difficult to keep back for long and impossible to exterminate altogether. The Joker thinks it's crucial to the city's personality, and whenever a "city beautification effort" event or fundraiser crops up, he makes a point of derailing it in one way or another, considers it a civic duty for which he's particularly well-suited.

He ducks around the side of the ugliest and largest of these buildings, the mask muffling the sound of his absent-minded humming. In the alleyway, there's a barred staircase, leading below street level, and he pats at the unfamiliar jacket until he hears a jingle, then he draws a sparse ring of keys from that pocket and unlocks the rusty gate.

He knows the superintendent of this place. They're not friends, the Joker doesn't _have_ friends (no, not even Emma, despite the pleasing lies they tell one another every time the topic comes up), but the guy is the uncle of one of the Joker's more competent henchmen, and shares that henchman's proclivity for lawlessness—at least, he'd been plenty eager to accept a payoff in exchange for access to the large, chambered basement of the place without any qualms as to what was being _done_ with that basement. The Joker just isn't supposed to leave any bodies in the building. (They'll see about that.)

He locks the gate behind him and moseys down the stairs, the dull stab of pain whenever he puts weight on his bad leg irritating him, though not enough to make him feel like lashing out, like taxing the leg beyond what it can endure, maybe, out of sheer spite. He'd just end up more frustrated, after. Better to channel that annoyance into something productive.

Or, at the very least, _fun._

To that end…

He unlocks the door at the bottom of the stairs and goes in. The basement is dim and loud, alive with the sound of the machines that keep the building running. He stalks down the corridor cut between them, caged on either side to keep wanderers from fucking up the works, turns the corner at the end, and there—there are two henchmen in plainclothes, right where he left them, guarding a door at the end of the corridor. They're sitting on the floor, cross-legged like children and playing cards, but one sees him as soon as he appears and stands instantly, his hands going behind him to his holster.

They don't recognize him. The Joker is tempted to fuck with them, maybe test them out a little bit—he can get to the end of the corridor before the guns are even drawn, easy, and it'd be fun to get a firsthand look at what they thought they'd do when confronted with a real threat—but as quickly as the henchman started reaching for the gun, his hand falls away. He's placed him, despite the mask hiding his most distinguishing features. _Bright kid_.

He doesn't bother to really acknowledge them as he stalks closer, just pulls the hat free of his head, yanks his mask off, and tucks them both away into his jacket. He gestures impatiently at the door with outstretched fingers, and the smart one fumbles to get it unlocked for him. "Stay put," is all he says, and he enters the room, dragging the door solidly closed behind him.

The little room is a glorified storage closet for a few backup generators, one of which Jim Gordon is securely handcuffed to. The floor and walls are made of heavy concrete that easily mute screams and the crack of disciplinary measures from the dozens of oblivious residents of the building above it, and the generators are industrial, old, and huge—it would take four men, easy, to move one—making the place an ideal prison for the Joker's needs.

It looks like Jim's been sleeping, or passed out, perhaps. (The Joker, thrilled beyond words to finally have a moment alone with him, away from the prying eyes and restraining hands of the MCU, might have overdone things just a _smidge_.) He's sitting against the wall, and has been slumped loosely against the radiator to lessen the strain on his confined arms, but straightens up with a jerk when the Joker enters the room, like he's expecting to be worked over again, but the Joker stops just inside the door, folding his arms neatly behind his back and pressing the tip of his tongue hard into the corner of his mouth as he examines his prisoner.

Taking Jim Gordon had been almost comically easy, mostly a question of knowing the right things, of being in the right place at the right time. The Joker knew that Jim's increasingly infrequent time at home was always interrupted by someone, some _thing_ urgent calling him back to work. He knew that Jim rarely drove himself anywhere, that the department always sent an unmarked car to collect him when they needed him. He knew, thanks to the ongoing surveillance he'd ordered on the Gordon home (one of several phone calls he'd made while Emma was napping in the closet his first morning at the farmhouse) that Jim had been called in that morning, likely to deal with the aftermath of the events at the farmhouse.

The Joker had wanted this to be nice and personal, had hurried to get there in time. He'd arrived just as the two henchmen who'd been watching the Gordon house were setting up to intercept the approaching cruiser a block away.

When you had guys working for you who didn't really care a lot about their own self-preservation, had never _thought_ enough about it to care, it was easy to commandeer a police vehicle. As the black car turned into the quiet(er) residential area, one of the Joker's men stepped into the street and bounced deliberately off the hood. The driver, a ruddy young man with a cop's haircut that didn't suit him, slammed on brakes and leaped from the car to check on what he thought was a fallen pedestrian. (Frankly, the biggest gamble in the whole play was betting on him to stop—Gotham cops loved their hit-and-runs, but this was one of Gordon's people, the would-be saints of the force, and so the Joker bet right.)

The second the cop stepped out of the car, the other henchman was on him, blitzing him with a pair of beefy right hooks, and as the stunned officer fell back into the driver's seat, the Joker's man followed him, leaning in to unlock the doors and pop the trunk. In a single fluid sequence, the hit henchman climbed up and limped away out of the road, passing the Joker, who tucked a canister into his jacket on his way to get into the backseat, passing in his turn—and handing his handkerchief to—the other henchman, who dragged the cop around the car, shoved the handkerchief into his mouth and duct taped it in place, and dumped him in the trunk with little ceremony. That done, he returned to the driver's seat, closed the door, and put the car in drive.

It all happened in the span of about ten seconds, and it was all so quick, so smoothly-done, that any witnesses wouldn't be sure what they were seeing until later, too late to raise the alarm, to get help where it mattered.

The Joker ducked down behind the seat until his time to really _shine_ , fixing a compact gas mask over his mouth and waiting as they finished the short drive into the neighborhood. He waited as they pulled up outside of Jim's house, passenger side to the curb, black-tinted windows concealing the wrongness inside the car from the commissioner. He waited in bated silence as he listened to the sound of Jim's footsteps, jogging down the steps outside his house, pausing on the sidewalk as he turned to call a goodbye to his poor, beleaguered wife. Then the door was opening, the alarm chime sounding softly as the car shifted with his new weight, then cutting off abruptly as the door slammed shut.

Next: a pause, a quick intake of breath as Jim realized that the person driving was not the expected deputy. That was the Joker's cue.

He popped up from the backseat with a quick, nearly absent-minded "Hi, Jim," then, as the commissioner whipped around to look at him, pointed the aerosol canister he'd been carrying in his jacket directly at his face and sprayed.

Jim was quicker to respond than most people, had instincts for this kind of thing, and he lashed out immediately, catching the Joker so hard on his right ear that it rang louder than the usual tinnitus for hours after, but physics worked quickly against him. The Joker had a mask, the henchman had put one on as well while he was waiting at the curb, and the little space inside the car was filling up fast. Gordon twisted around, fumbled for the door handle, found it locked, and before he could try for the window (also locked), he slumped over.

Easy.

The Joker spent the rest of the day tending to various and sundry tasks—setting up to film the video in the remnants of a chop shop at the harbor, waking Jim, beating Jim, filming once Jim was finally out cold, overseeing Jim's relocation to his current prison because god only knew if he trusted the henchmen to do it themselves they'd find _some_ way to fuck it up, ordering a few more henchmen to locate an ambulance, and finally, around nightfall, taking the deputy who'd been locked in the trunk all day to a completely unrelated municipal works building (closed for the day) and cutting his throat nice and deep, leaving the body there to spice things up a little bit for Batman. By then, the boys had shown up, and it was time to collect Emma from the police station where she'd been confined since morning.

It's been a busy day, is the point. He hasn't even really had time to _talk_ to Jim. He plans to remedy that now.

The commissioner looks a little the worse for wear. The split on his forehead—the result of an abrupt collision with the hard floor without his hands free to catch him—has stopped bleeding, but the crust of dried blood is pretty ugly, and the skin around it that isn't turning purple is a livid shade of red. His eyes are red and bleary, and the rumpled hair, combined with the lack of Jim's usual glasses (the Joker swiped them from his face back in the car as soon as he was safely unconscious, tried them on, pronounced Jim's vision _terrible_ , and dropped them out the window), gives off a rather boyish impression. It makes the thick mustache in the middle of his face look comical.

The Joker dispensed with the title "Commissioner" a year or so back, figuring they were on much more familiar terms at that point. He tilts his head to one side and, making a point to keep his tone light and jovial, he asks, "How we doin', Jim?"

A younger, less experienced officer of the law would spit fire and defiance right about now, their pride wounded by the fact that they were bested and in need of some way to feel in control of themselves again. A fool would be trying to bargain his way out. Jim, however, isn't young or inexperienced, and, despite evidence to the contrary, he's not a fool, either. He ignores the polite inquiry and says, "You know, whatever you're asking for—they won't give it to you."

The Joker purses his lips thoughtfully, then says, "You don't, ah, you don't really know how this whole _self-preservation_ thing works, do you?"

It's a rhetorical question, and he figured its meaning would come across clearly enough, but Jim looks confused, so the Joker explains in hurried words. "You're assuming I'm asking for something in exchange for your…" he reaches out absently, makes a slight scrabbling gesture as he translates thoughts into speech, settling finally on "safe return," though his nose creases up with distaste at the thought. "You're _assuming_ that I _want_ something," he continues, putting both hands to his hips now, like a disappointed mother, "and trying to tell me I won't ge _t_ it, no matter _what_ I do. If I believe you… where does that leave _you_?"

He waits patiently, but Jim doesn't seem to have an answer to that. Instead, the commissioner seems gripped by some emotion—loathing, if the Joker had to guess—and needs a moment to get control of it. The twitching of his face is funny for a second or two, but the Joker grows quickly bored of it and drops his hands, beginning to pace his side of the room.

"Ah, well, it doesn't matter," he says all in a rush. "I _got_ what I wanted, and nobody even had to _give_ it to me." He glances slyly out of the corner of his eye to see that he's regained Jim's attention—he'd been so ready to play the self-sacrificing hero, but the Joker has taken him off-guard, and he looks perplexed, more worried now. He won't ask, though, maybe concerned that showing interest in the Joker's plans might render him some sort of accomplice, somehow. Lawful types are so _boring_ that way.

The Joker is perfectly content guiding him along, though, for now, and reading the cue, he pulls a quick, thoughtful frown and says, " _Speak_ ing of the thing I want… you wouldn't happen to remember her, huh? Emma Vane? Little white redhead, about—" He makes a clicking sound with his tongue, holds his hand flat at chest level, where the top of Emma's head would just reach if she was standing in front of him—"yea high?"

Oh, Jim remembers. He's gone tense like a piano wire about to snap, which is interesting—the Joker figured, given Emma's arrest, that Jim already knew about her latest bout of slumming it, but it's clear that he doesn't have a clue about what went down at the farmhouse, is astonished to hear her name. Astonished and upset, and he speaks like he's not thinking clearly, which isn't exactly a safe thing to do around the Joker (though the Joker supposes he can be forgiven for it, given the head injury and all). "Now—you wait, now, you leave her alone—"

"Oh, it's much too late for that," the Joker assures him. "She's back in the city, y'know. Brought here by your very own men, _back_ into the belly of the beast, so to speak. I tell you, Jim, the Gotham PD is making a real mess out of this one already." He sighs, pauses in his pacing, and shakes his head. "Almost makes me want to let you go so you can whip 'em into shape, pose a better challenge."

"Maybe you should." Jim knows it's not going to happen, he's smart that way, but he's willing to go through the motions, to pretend he's trying to bargain instead of trying furiously to think his way out of this jam. The Joker appreciates that about him. Defeatists are never any fun.

"Noooo," he says after a short, contemplative silence. "I'd have to come up with a _whole_ new plan, and Jim?" He turns hooded eyes to the commissioner, dropping his voice confidentially. "I _like_ this plan."

Jim flexes his fingers uneasily, and the Joker eyes his wrists, which are red and starting to bruise. Looks like ol' Jim tried his hand against solid steel—that obviously didn't work out too well for him. "So, what—" he starts, and shifts almost unconsciously, like he can find some way to get more comfortable in his position on the concrete floor—"What _is_ the plan this time, huh, Joker? You gonna kidnap Emma Vane again? Kill another mobster?" He's hunting for answers, but not particularly well. The Joker graciously blames the head injury again.

"A punchline's never funny if you've heard it before," he replies, pointing an index finger at Gordon, part-scolding and part-lecturing. " _You're_ sixty, _you_ know that at this point in your life." It's untrue, of course, both parts—there are a few knee-slappers out there that get the Joker every time, and Jim's actually in his early fifties, tops. Still, he doesn't take the bait.

"What, what are you doing, then?" he presses instead. "What's the _point_ of all this?"

"A joke's never funny if you gotta have it explained to you, either," says the Joker serenely, almost as an aside, because he's distracted, thinking about Emma again, wondering how she's faring in the Narrows. When she meets him tomorrow—and he has no doubt in his mind that she _will_ meet him tomorrow—he's looking forward to hearing how she navigated the tricky neighborhood. The story's bound to make him laugh.

But he's being a bad host. He snaps back to his current situation with a slow, hissing inhale, drawing it through his teeth, and as he breathes out again, he says, "No, Jimmy-boy, I'm afraid you're just gonna have to wait and see just like _ev_ -erybody else. I'll tell you something, though," he adds, pressing the knuckles of one fist thoughtfully into the palm of another. "That girl—she really inspires _fee_ lings in me. Ya know?"

"Feelings," Jim repeats, like he really doesn't want the Joker to unpack that word.

"Yeah," the Joker muses, ignoring his obvious apprehension. "It's, uh… I dunno." He turns, resumes his pacing, movements a touch more agitated now, crooking his fingers into claws and raking them through muddy green hair already rumpled from the hat. "She's just so _bright,_ you know, and fun. _Funny_. Whenever she's around I just get this almost irre _sis_ table urge to just… _crush_ her down into something, something small, something _use_ -less."

His lip draws back from his teeth slightly, baring them in a snarl as he feels the edges of a daydream fighting for his attention—Emma's pretty green eyes, gone gray and glassy and lifeless, red lips turned purple at the edges, and him, tasting her blood coating his fingers. He swallows convulsively, runs his tongue along the back seam of his scars, and blinks hard to dispel the pretty image. If only she knew, if only she _knew_ how _difficult_ it was to pull himself back every time he got his hand around her neck, where it fit so _well_ —if only she knew how much he wanted to tighten his grip and look her in her eyes until they went still and her creaking fight for air lapsed into silence.

It's goddamn poetic, is what it is, the vision of Emma slipping away beneath him. More than that: it's inevitable. They both know it, there is no other way things can end after how they began, and he's pretty sure that they'll be equally satisfied by it when it's finally time.

Which it isn't. _Time_ , that is, it isn't time for them to part ways, not yet. He's not sure when the time is coming. Soon. When it's time, he'll know, he's _very_ sure of that.

He snaps out of his reverie, suddenly alert to the fact that he's being a terrible host, and Jim is giving him a really ugly look, so the lack of hospitality must be bothering him. "Ah, look at me," the Joker says apologetically, shaking his head, "getting all sentimental. But don't you worry, Jim! Emma doesn't need my attention again till—" He puts his hand over the pocket where his watch should be, but of course, he's not wearing his vest, and his watch isn't there, but he doesn't let it derail him—"ah, sometime tomorrow," he says after a short pause, playing sheepish and letting his hand drop again. "That gives us _plenty_ of time."

Jim doesn't ask "for what," because, judging by the look on his face, the way his head droops to rest against the metal edge of the generator, he already knows he won't like the answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE JOKER HAD TO DO IT TO 'EM + his whole little bit about Emma inspiring feelings in him is directly inspired by the scene in Always Sunny where Dennis is talking about how he's feeling things for the first time since he was a kid. Again, I have no control over my life.
> 
> Dense chapter without much action, but I felt like it was time for a little peek inside the Joker's head. The next chapter is roughly 2k longer and jam-packed with Batman, mark your calendars. Love u all!


	5. Chapter 5

Batman doesn't answer me, but I kind of got the sense from the only time we actually _spoke_ before now that he's not the best conversationalist, so I don't push him. Instead, trusting that whatever heroic instinct pulls him away from bed every night to punch muggers and dodge angry cops will also keep him from bailing on me now (though Lord knows he'd have every right), I turn to face the fire and keep talking, quieter now.

"Well, if he didn't, you should know—I'm very sorry. It was a _super_ -bad call. I was a little stir-crazy at that point from the… proximity to him, you know," I add, sniffing—it's colder up here than it is on the street, windier, and my nose, doubtless bright red at this point, is starting to feel a little drippy. "Couple of near-death experiences. Suddenly it seemed like the most important thing in the world to tell him off."

I realize, suddenly, how weak this must sound to the guy that I literally _hit with a two-by-four_ , and I scoff at myself, acknowledging the foolishness of my words. "Not that that's any excuse," I say, staring hard into the flames, knowing that the brightness of them will render me blind in the night as soon as I look away. "I just thought you might like to know the reason why. _I_ always want to know the reasons for things." _Which makes the Joker a really shitty confederate for me, personally_ , I think, but don't bother to voice the thought. We'll get around to him soon enough.

"Where's Gordon?" The voice comes suddenly, and from a much closer place than I expect it to—just a foot or two to my right, and I look abruptly over from the fire. I have to blink away the black spots in my vision, then, slowly, he comes into focus, a huge black shadow standing at the edge of the rooftop HVAC unit I'm leaning back against. _God, he's big._ Sure, some of it's the armor, but even without it, he must be an obscenely big dude.

"I don't know," I say as soon as I get over the little shock of him being nearer than I thought, and then I scoff at myself again as I realize just how _little_ I know. "He won't tell me anything. _You_ know more than I do at this point, I'd bet. You seem to be better at this kind of thing than most people. Definitely better than _me_."

"The Joker's men took you from the police station." It's a statement; he's not asking me for confirmation. "Now you're here. What happened in-between?"

"Well, the gas got to me some," I say, thinking hard even as I speak, wondering just how much to tell him—I don't _want_ to hide anything from him, really, but something is telling me that I shouldn't be too hasty to reveal the Joker's proposed meeting tomorrow. "Took me a while to recover from it, and once I did, he just dropped me here, in the Narrows—with no money, and no phone, but hell, at least it's not the dead of winter, and I have shoes this time," I add wryly, lifting my leg a few inches from where it's outstretched along the roof, showing off my booted foot.

"He didn't say anything about Gordon?" The gravelly voice is so low it's almost a whisper, and I find myself lowering the volume of mine, too, mirroring him a little.

"Nothing useful. I asked, but he played coy."

"And his plans involving you?"

I spread my hands out, palms up, signifying that I have no idea, which is mostly true. The Joker has never bothered to give me more than the next step in his plan, not even _that_ if he can help it, and now is no exception. All I know is that the Joker wants me to meet him tomorrow on South Channel Island, and I don't want to tell Batman that because…

Because honestly, I have no idea how he'll react to the information. Maybe he'll hogtie me and show up to the rendezvous himself instead, but I can't imagine that the Joker will be coming to meet me himself, not in broad daylight—far more likely there'll be henchmen there to collect me, and that goes wrong no matter which way you slice it. Either Batman shows up guns blazing, so to speak, tries to beat information out of the clowns, tips his hand, and the Joker shoots Gordon in the head as soon as he catches wind of what happened, or Batman waits, watching the henchmen for clues, it's a wash because the Joker is smart enough to suspect that something's fishy if I don't show and will tell his guys to lay low till the whole thing's over… and then, in the end, he shoots Gordon in the head. Either way, it doesn't end well for Gordon.

Or maybe Batman would send me along to the meeting, use me as bait, then follow me wherever the henchmen took me—I'm not sure openly putting me at risk like that would work with his hero complex, but then again, at this point, I'm pretty sure I can be categorized as "shady" at the very least, and I'm not certain I qualify as worthy of his protection anymore. It doesn't matter. Using me as bait won't work any better than the other approach. Wherever the Joker is planning to spirit me away tomorrow, it won't be where he's hiding Gordon, and even _if_ Batman follows me straight to the Joker, even _if_ he manages to get the jump on him, he'll never beat the truth out of him. In the end, the Joker will never talk, and Gordon will be lost somewhere in the depths of the city until it's much too late to save him.

Until I know where Gordon is, I can't really help Batman, which begs the question: why am I wasting his time?

It's a question he seems to be considering, too—at least, after a lingering pause, he asks, "Do you have anything to tell me?"

The question is asked in the exact same quiet tone as everything else he's said, but I can't help but read some exasperation into it, because that's what _I_ would feel if I were him. I shake my head at him and grimace apologetically. "Just that I'm sorry. I didn't know if I'd get another chance."

He starts to say something, then cuts himself off and turns his head sharply, like he's listening to something. I mimic him instinctively, and we're totally silent for a second. I don't hear anything, but apparently, he does, because he's on me in a second, pulling me up from the ground like I weigh no more than a rag doll, despite the fact that I'm too startled and sluggish to help out much, and hustling me around to the other side of the HVAC unit—out of view of the door, I realize belatedly.

He crouches behind the unit, tugging me down with him, and I just have time to think how different it is, being pulled around by someone who not only _doesn't_ have a grip that pinches and bruises and digs into my flesh, but seems to be going out of his way to be careful in his handling of me. Then the rooftop door opens, and we fall silent and wait.

I'm half-afraid that the Joker had me followed, that the clowns have shown up and things are about to get ugly, but I realize quickly that's not the case: a voice says "Fucking junkies" in a heavy Eastern European accent, and then the door slams shut again. Batman's grip on my arm remains firm, though, a sign that the coast isn't clear, and I trust his expertise over mine, so I don't try to stand, just stay there crouched in his shadow, examining his face.

It's dark, but my eyes have adjusted to it by now, and the fire, while not direct, is enough of a general light source that I can make him out surprisingly well. This is the closest I've ever been to him, while neither of us are moving, anyway, and it's strange to me that the proximity and new details don't make him seem any more… human than before.

The mask covers his neck, going down to meet the armor, and the visible part of his face—the strong, clean-shaven jaw, the soft-looking mouth, at odds with the person it's attached to—don't really give me anything. He doesn't seem old, but I wouldn't call him young, either. The skin around his eyes has been smeared with black, like the Joker's, blending seamlessly into the black of the mask and making it impossible to discern the color of his eyes without considerably brighter light. All I can see against the black of them are white pinpoints, reflections of what little light there is. Despite the fact that he's practically on top of me, his arm tense beside my head as he braces himself against the unit, I can't hear him breathing.

The door slams open again, and I can hear the stranger's footprints crossing the roof, close to us. I tense up, worried we'll be discovered, but Batman's calm is implacable—and justified, I realize when I hear a loud hissing and the rooftop grows abruptly darker. The man is the superintendent or something like it, had come back to put out the fire, and now, judging by the receding sound of his footsteps, he's leaving again.

Batman doesn't move an inch, though, till the door closes again with a bang. Then he rises to stand, the leathery palm of his gauntleted hand finding mine and drawing me up with him. "We shouldn't be out in the open like this," he rasps, staring at the door for a moment before redirecting his gaze to me. "You should be in police custody."

_Ah, right. Mr. Lawful._ I shrug evasively, slipping my hand out of his—he lets me, because we both know I'm not going anywhere if he doesn't want me to—and taking a step away, putting a little more distance between us before crossing my arms over my middle. "I put you in charge of what happens next as soon as I called you here, and I'll do whatever you tell me to," I say, though I'm not resigned to the idea just yet. Batman's clearly a doer; the fact that he's voicing the thought instead of just scooping me up and taking me back to the cops means he has reservations. "If that's 'go back to jail,' then I'm not gonna argue. Maybe this time we'll get lucky."

Without the fire, I can see even less of him now than before, but it seems to me anyway that his expression shifts subtly into something grim and decisive. He knows as well as I do that the Joker's not just going to _forget_ about me, that if Batman hands me back to the cops the Joker will just take me away from them again, one way or another.

"I can hide you," he says at length. "It'll keep you out of his reach until he's locked up again and Gordon is found. You'll be safe until this is all over."

_Safe_. I haven't felt _that_ since before I met the Joker, not really. I feel something close to it _now_ , though, up here with a man who has no reason to protect me, and it's the novelty of the feeling that makes me want to agree, even though it would mean risking my freedom of movement, my freedom to do whatever I need to in order to recover Gordon. I doubt he's going to lock me in an underground cell somewhere, and I also doubt he's going to sit around babysitting me when there's work to do, so he's probably offering a place in a safe house he keeps somewhere. It's not the worst idea in the world.

Still. I know I haven't done every single thing I could do to see the Joker back behind bars in the past, and I still feel guilty about hitting him last time. I know I called him here because I hoped he would help me, but now that I'm actually _facing_ him it's hard to feel like I'm worth his time.

"You know I'm not actually your problem, right?" I blurt out before I can really think through the wisdom of talking him _out_ of giving me a secure place to rest and think and _not_ be in prison for the time being.

He looks at me in silence. In the dark, I can't read his expression, and, made nervous by his lack of response, I keep talking.

"I mean—you've saved me before, and I'm… _so_ grateful for that, don't think I'm not. I know I'm sending mixed messages here, I'm sorry, I just… only _I'm_ responsible for me. You don't have to protect me."

"Yes, I do."

The firmness with which he says it takes me by surprise, and I blink at him for a second before nodding. _Well, alrighty then._ I meant it when I said I'd do whatever he decided, and I uncross my arms, stepping back towards him, yielding in silence. He takes me by the shoulder, again with that foreign gentleness, and leads me to the edge of the roof.

Unlike someone _else_ I could name, Batman wastes neither actions nor words. His hand leaves my shoulder, finding my waist instead, and simultaneously, with the other hand, he takes something from his belt—gun-like, but not a gun. "Hold on to me," he says.

I'm not used to contact with other human beings anymore, so this should be interesting. I turn obediently, reaching up for his shoulders, and his arm goes tight around my waist, lifting me off my feet and making it easy to get my arms around his neck. I wait for the discomfort to set in, but maybe it's because he's so businesslike, so methodical, or maybe it's the plate of armor that makes it feel less like I'm touching a person (or maybe it's his sort of alien quality in general), but the awkwardness isn't there.

Then, he fires the gun-like thing, and I can hear the sound of a metal cable unwinding for maybe two seconds before he tenses under my arms and then we're in free fall, my stomach dropping for a sickening span of seconds until the cable goes taut with a rough jerk. I press my face into the armor at his shoulder, absolutely positive that he can't support the weight of both of us with the strength of only one arm—if we're going to end up a wet smear on the pavement, I'd rather not see it coming—but moments later, we land with jarring impact on the cracked asphalt several stories below.

He sets me down, pausing when I grip at his elbow, and asks, "All right?"

I manage a short laugh, though I'm feeling just a bit shaken after the brief fall. "Sure. You do that a hundred times a night, I guess—I'm just not used to it. All good." To prove it, I let go of his arm and take a step, and my legs hold me fine, but I still don't feel entirely up to par. I imagine the lack of rest is starting to catch up to me. Still, I put on a game face and ask him, "Where to?"

He doesn't have to answer. I hear a low rumble, and a car turns abruptly into the side road he's brought me to. No, not a car—it's more akin to a tank, and it stops just feet from where we wait. I realize I've seen it before, on the news. I didn't expect to ever see it in person.

"I mean—kinda shabby, but it'll _do_ ," I say to Batman.

He doesn't even crack a smile, but I don't take it personally. I don't think he's really the smiling type. He just gestures to the tank. "I'll help you get in."

The ride is mostly silent, and I'm a little relieved. I'm sure Batman has a lot on his mind, and as for me, I'm lost in a tired fuzz of worry about Gordon, of a sort of horrified curiosity as to what the Joker's doing at the moment. I wonder if he expected me to seek out Batman, to get help from one of the few people who have a chance in hell of actually helping.

_Probably not_ , I think bitterly. _Probably expected me to have to fight off vagabonds in the Narrows, probably unsuccessfully_. It's the kind of thing he'd think was just hilarious.

_Don't think about him_ , I tell myself. _Not now, not while you don't have to_. There'll be time for that later—I'm certain of it.

My guess proves right: we don't leave Gotham. We go to its edges, though, to the east of downtown, near the harbor. I'm a little surprised when he pulls the tank to a stop in what looks like a defunct industrial district, several blocks from any residential spaces, and more surprised when he approaches a nondescript little structure about the size of a phone booth, opening the door to reveal a narrow, fluorescent-lit staircase heading steeply underground, but it seems a little late to pump the brakes, so when he motions me downstairs, I go. He follows close behind, the size of him more evident in the enclosed space.

There's a little door at the bottom—at least, I _think_ it's a door, it's made of metal and shaped like one, but I don't see a lock or doorknob. Batman leans past me and taps something to a little panel on its edge that I hadn't initially noticed, the panel lights up green, and the door slides open to reveal the safehouse.

I'm surprised to find—given that we're underground—that the place is actually nice. Fancy, even—the furnishings are so sparing as to be Spartan, but I can tell from the look of them that one piece would probably be worth more than the contents of my entire apartment when I was still living in Gotham, and the whole place is decked out in shades of white and gray, with dim, soothing recessed wall lights. The kitchen and living space are adjoined, with a single door that I imagine leads to a bedroom.

I take it all in, then turn and narrow my eyes appraisingly at Batman, who—surprisingly—doesn't look out of place here (it must be the minimalism; it keeps the place from feeling too homey, so a man-sized bat isn't particularly jarring). That tank was pretty high-tech, so it's not the first time this has occurred to me, but the stuff Batman has access to is not cheap. _He's gotta be a man of some means, or at the very least, he has a sponsor or several_. Being Batman looks like it costs a lot.

I shrug off the train of thought. I'm not particularly interested in knowing who Batman is, aside from that little creeping sense of curiosity that most people have when faced with a mystery. It's better for everyone, I think, if his identity remains a secret.

He doesn't venture too far into the safe house, standing close to the door as he speaks. "Ideally there would be someone to stay with you, to keep you safe and hidden. Right now, there's no one. You'll have to stay here, keep your head down. As long as you're here, he won't find you."

I just nod—I prefer the idea of being here alone, anyway, free to make my own decisions, but it seems unwise to tell him so. He indicates the kitchen across the room. "The kitchen is stocked with non-perishables. Nothing fresh, but it'll work for a few days."

"Is that how long you think this will take?" I ask, folding my arms so I have somewhere to put my hands and turning to face him. "A few days?"

"It's hard to tell with the Joker."

"He gave the police a twenty-four hour deadline, like, nine hours ago," I remind him. "They don't know for sure that he's the one who took me from the station—he sent his men in without masks, gassed everybody, so they couldn't see shit anyway. That might even be why he set me loose—he might be pretending to play it like he didn't have anything to do with it, so he can hurt Gordon with immunity."

"I know."

"Could you set something up, if you wanted to?" I ask, more because I'm interested to know the answer than because I think it'll work. "Some sort of exchange, me for Gordon?"

"I'm not gonna do that," he gravels.

"Yeah, but if it comes down to one of us or the other—"

"I am _not_ going to do that." His tone makes it clear that he's not interested in an argument, and he doesn't exactly waste the breath on detailing his plan and goals, but it's not hard to figure it out. He's Batman, he's the good guy, regardless of what happened with Harvey Dent two years ago, regardless of what the police say, and he catches the bad guy and saves the innocents.

_Except I'm no innocent._ His attitude towards me is increasingly baffling. So he doesn't hold a grudge about getting whacked in the face with a board, I get that part, he's a saint, apparently—but history indicates that he's really good at this stuff, at figuring things out. He must know about the farmhouse by now, probably more than the police do. He must have a timeline, he must know that I let the Joker stay in my home for two days without lifting a finger to alert anyone, and complicated circumstances or not, that has got to make me a suspicious figure in his eyes. He shouldn't be treating me like someone to be protected.

But maybe he _doesn't_ know. Maybe this is just his whole heroic schtick getting in the way; maybe he's one of those white knights that Detective March was talking about, unwilling to see me as in any way complicit. As soon as the idea occurs to me, I find it repellent. With other people, sure, it would be advantageous to be dismissed as being in the wrong place at the wrong time (consistently, so many times in a row).

Batman, I think, deserves more.

He's turning to go, apparently having said everything he needs to say. I abandon caution and say, "I fucked him."

He stops.

A few seconds stretch out endlessly, then he turns back to me, looking calm. "When was this?"

I have to think about that. The hours have stretched out so long that it feels like days, weeks have passed. "Last night, I guess." His gaze is hard to bear—it turns out I still have the grace to feel ashamed. I look across the room instead, training my eyes on the shiny kitchen appliances set out on the shiny kitchen counters. "It was sort of a long time coming."

"What makes you say that?" His voice is very quiet; it's hard to read anything in his tone.

I shrug, still too much of a coward to look at him. "It's… hard to express," I say, though I've expressed it before, to the Joker himself. "I've sort of isolated myself since the first time I met him. He's the only person I've had any consistent interaction with. Over time, he kind of became… the receptacle for any… feelings for other humans I was still capable of having. Lust was… one of them."

Another pause that feels long, though it's probably just a couple of seconds. Then, he says, "Thank you for telling me," and I hear him move.

I'm startled, and I turn my head to see that he's trying to leave again. "What, that's it?"

He stops, looks at me. Though the mask and the paint hide it, I get the strong impression he's raising an eyebrow at me, a silent question, _what did you expect?_

I hold out my bandaged hand, palm up, indicating my confusion. "I just admitted to you that I'm _actually_ sleeping with the enemy. You're gonna… what, keep hiding me? Trust me to even be _around_ you?"

If he was more human-like, I think he might sigh, slump against the doorframe, but he remains stoic, looking intently at me, and says, "I don't blame you for that. You shouldn't blame yourself, either."

I frown. Of all the opinions in the world, this is not the one I expected from him. "I'm sorry?"

"I don't blame you," he repeats.

Now I'm a little piqued. It's one thing to assume the best in people; it's another thing entirely for them to _tell_ you the worst and for you to shut your ears to it. "I don't think you understand," I say, thinking maybe he's a little dumber than he seems, that I need to really spell it out. "I wasn't forced or coerced. I _chose_ to sleep with him. Hell, I _initiated_ it."

This time, he does yield to human impulse, albeit a mild one—he tips his head back and searches the ceiling for a moment before returning his stare to me. "I've been dealing with the Joker for a long time," he says finally, quietly, the gravel almost gone from his voice. "By now, I know exactly how he manipulates his victims."

"Manipu—" I start, already exasperated, but he cuts me off.

"When it comes to his plans for the people he's targeted, choices are very limited, if they exist _at all_. If he's playing one of his games with you, any _choice_ you make just funnels you directly to the exact place he wants you." He pauses, letting this sink in, then adds, "I'm not sure consent is possible in circumstances like those."

I stare at him for a moment. He's not entirely wrong—days spent with the Joker are highly unusual, highly under the Joker's control, and I'm always thinking and doing things I'd never think or do on a normal day—but I still don't love his take, because it removes any responsibility, any agency I had or have when it comes to dealing with the Joker. I'm not sure what's worse—having my thoughts and actions whitewashed until I'm nothing but an innocent bystander, or being considered a willing accomplice.

The truth is in the middle of the two of those things, somewhere, but I'm willing to bet that most people—even Gordon, even Batman—will only be willing to accept one or the other. It doesn't help that I'm reluctant to really try to explain mine and the Joker's weird… _thing_ … to Batman. There's no reason it should make me feel awkward, but it does, like I'm talking to my _dad_ or something.

He must understand the expression on my face, because he takes a step towards me, away from the door, then stops when I tighten my arms around my stomach, feeling on edge, misunderstood. I'm avoiding eye contact, but I feel his stare like a weight on my skin.

He tells me, "I don't blame you. I blame myself."

_That_ gets my attention. Brow furrowing in confusion, I meet his eyes. He's close enough now, and the light is good enough, that I can make out the color of his eyes: green, sort of, not like mine, but with a lot of brown in them. That and his tone breaks through the alien-ness of him that's been the order of the night and makes him seem suddenly, shockingly human.

He says: "I should have helped you. I should've made sure he'd never lay eyes on you again."

I'm already shaking my head. "No—we _talked_ about this—it was my decision to stay in the city, and it's not your fault that he breaks out a—"

"I should have talked you into leaving the first time," he interrupts, growling, sounding almost angry. "Barring that, I should have gotten you further away from the city than upstate, or watched you more carefully once you were there, made sure he couldn't reach you. You did what you could, but you were completely alone, with no one to help you—except Gordon, but he's limited; he can't guarantee your safety."

_Neither can you_ , I think, but can't manage to speak the words, feeling a sudden weight—maybe the sleeplessness—press at my shoulders, my neck, and feeling something akin to horror taking root in my stomach.

Batman doesn't give me much of a chance to interject; he's still staring at me, talking steadily: "He _wants_ you to blame yourself. He _wants_ you to think that you somehow made this happen, that you deserve what he's done to you, but, Emma—this is on me. I should have done _so_ much more to help you. Everything that happened to you is my fault."

That's a crock of horseshit, of course, but simultaneously, it's the thing that undoes me. I've been doing so well, pushing through the weariness, toughing it out, not crying ( _never_ crying if I can manage it, the Joker gets annoyed, mocks me when I cry, it does absolutely nothing to help me), but whatever walls I put up are crumbling to pieces right now. I don't buy Batman's admission of guilt, I don't think _any_ of this is his fault, let alone all of it, but the fact that he's saying it… the fact that someone _cares_ about me, doesn't think I'm evil, (even though I've hurt him, even though he knows what I've done), and wants to help me…

I can feel the muscles in my face contracting, crumpling a second before I get my hands up to cover myself, hiding the sudden swell of tears from him, embarrassed and ashamed that I'm breaking in front of him. _Stop, stop, stop it_ —I try to focus on that push of resistance, trying to pull it back before it becomes a _thing_. This is weakness, this is useless, but now that it's started, it's apparently just going to happen. When I breathe in, it has that trembling, wet quality of a person on the verge of a crying jag, and I turn abruptly away, mortified but powerless to stop it.

I hear him move, then his gloved hand is on my shoulder. Under normal circumstances, I'd drop dead before thinking about hugging Batman, but "normal" is out the window right now. I hadn't really thought about physical contact being particularly important to me, but after being so self-isolated for so long, deprived of much human touch (except what I get from the Joker, which is hardly a comfort), and with whatever emotional strength I had completely gone right now, I turn to him. I keep my head down so he can't see the full extent of what a mess I am, and I reach up around his neck and hide my face in his armor, and he lets me. He even puts his arms around me, gently, like he's indicating that he's in no particular hurry, that's it's okay for me to take my time to get under control.

He stays with me for longer than I think is wise, actually, waiting until I manage to calm down, till the tears subside and I'm just leaning against him, tired and breathing slowly but steadily once more. Truth be told, I could probably stay here all night—it's such a foreign sensation, feeling actually _safe_ with someone, feeling like as long as Batman's here, I don't have to worry about anything… but that isn't true, is it? Sure, he's put the Joker away plenty of times, but the Joker has also run circles around him before, and there's no way of telling which one of them will come out on top this time. Gordon needs all the help he can get, and the potential meeting with the Joker looms large in my head, and before too much longer, the restlessness of knowing there's _so much more to do_ gets to me and I can't just keep Batman here as a comfort blanket anymore.

I sniff and lean back, letting go of him, aware that my face is a puffy red mess but not caring so much that he can see me now that I'm not actively crying. "I'm sorry," I murmur as his arms slip away from me as well, and then I see the wet spots my tears have left on the sternum of his armor and frown, quickly wiping at them with my palm. "God, I'm sorry—"

"Don't." He grasps my shoulder, and I take a steadying breath before looking up and meeting his eyes. "Don't apologize for what he's done."

I still think Batman's probably a little biased, too eager to put everything shitty onto the Joker and nothing on the people he keeps close to him, but the weariness that comes after a good cry is kicking in, and I find I don't have the energy to argue. I nod instead, managing a weak "Thank you." It seems insufficient, so I add, "For all of it. For everything."

He nods at the inner door. "You need sleep."

"Yeah, I know," I breathe, knowing he needs to go—it's why I pulled away from him in the first place—but reluctant to see the last of him. I wouldn't think, given previous stilted encounters with the guy, that he'd be good at the whole _comfort_ thing, but obviously I was wrong.

He drops his hand, steps back, towards the exit, and I fold my arms, watching him go. He pauses again, though, looking like he's debating something with himself, then says, "Emma."

I raise my eyebrows questioningly, attentive.

He asks, "Can I trust you?"

_Well, ain't that a question_. Any answer would be too complicated to go over, would require explanations and talk of hypotheticals and… well, it'd be worthy of the Joker's twists and turns and mind tricks. I don't want to get into it, so I just say, "I don't think so. I don't know what I'm going to have to do in the future. I'm sorry. But you can trust that I won't knowingly do anything to hurt you, not ever again—and you can trust that I feel the same about Gordon. If it comes down to choosing between the Joker and either of you… you'll win out."

If he's angry or upset at hearing this, he doesn't indicate it in any way. His graveling voice is completely neutral; he tells me: "When you play the Joker's game, you're playing by his rules. He sets you up to lose."

"I know."

"The only way to win is to refuse to play in the first place."

I fight to keep from giving him any sort of visible reaction. He wouldn't be giving me this warning if he didn't suspect I was working my own angle on this, but he's not exactly locking me up or torturing details out of me. I want to keep my options open, and that means not putting more responsibility on Batman than I already have.

He watches me, taking in my silence, and finally just nods with a low grunting sound. "Stay hidden," he says, and turns to leave.

I wait a few moment after he goes, settling into this strange, new place, this strange feeling, then I turn to go to the bedroom. I need to sleep, for a little while at least, and then I need to figure out where to go from here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have a really soft spot for those instances in comic where, instead of just doing his beat-the-bad-guys-thing and then clearing out, Batman hangs behind to tend to the victim (when the victim appears to need it). It shows a humanity in Batman that I think is way too often absent when people are writing him (and is another one of the reasons that Unpretty's [Sorrowful and Immaculate Hearts](https://archiveofourown.org/series/440926) series features my _favorite_ Batman/Bruce; it dives deeply into his empathy, which manifests constantly, if not always in the most overt or conventional ways, because Bruce Wayne is and always will be a deeply _weird_ person). That humanity is _the_ difference between a Batman-who-became-Batman-as-a-quest-for-revenge (uncompelling, meh, blah) versus a Batman-who-became-Batman-to-stop-anyone-else-from-being-hurt-the-way-he-was-hurt (heart-wrenching, lovable, someone save _him_ please!).
> 
> Anyway, that's a little bit of a window into what I was thinking throughout this chapter, which was a long time coming, because despite their history, Emma and Batman are pretty closely aligned and have needed to sync up for a while now. If Batman had been around more, if he'd been able to temper the isolation and manipulation Emma was receiving from the Joker, things would probably have turned out drastically differently, and Em doesn't blame him for not being able to save her (when you're wanted by a crooked police force and hated by the city you love, it limits you), but he sure as sin blames him _self_. idk this chapter makes me deeply sad, _whatever_
> 
> been watching a lot of Gotham lately, lads. that Jerome sure is something else & I love him.
> 
> Next chapter, Emma and the Joker reunite! He finds out what she's been doing and it's not something she's going to hear the end of _anytime_ soon. Till then, I love you all!


	6. Chapter 6

I sleep hard for five, six hours, then wake up in a cold sweat, too anxious to get back to sleep. It's around six AM.

I know that sooner or later, I'm going to have to face the decision ahead of me—but I've got time before then, so I spend it procrastinating, trying to ignore the feeling of dread that's settled beneath my ribcage, the constant feeling that something _bad_ is going to happen.

The safe house kitchen is stocked a little bit like a bomb shelter would be, I imagine, albeit with fancier appliances, but I find that I'm starving after having eaten nothing but a few stale donuts yesterday, and I'm not about to turn picky now. I find powdered eggs, salt, and pepper, and make a panful of scrambled eggs, and it turns out I'm hungry enough that they taste better to me than fresh eggs ever have. I drink a lot of water with them, clued in by the dryness in my throat and mouth that I'm probably pretty dehydrated, then I find a little bag of coffee that's still fresh—good stuff, a rich-smelling French roast.

Once I've brewed it (there's no cream, but plenty of sugar), I settle on the couch in front of the TV, feeling a little better physically, if not in spirit. Then I switch on the news.

My face is everywhere, on every news channel. The GCPD can't confirm who was responsible for my abduction from their custody, it turns out, though everyone has their suspicions. "The Joker took her," says a young correspondent plainly on CNN, looking impatient. "Now he's just f***ing with us."

"You're not wrong," I mumble, switching channels.

GCN has reduced me to a few bullet points, summing up my previous run-ins with the Joker, wrapping it all up with the fact that I was detained yesterday after a suspicious incident at my home upstate that may have involved the Joker. ("A rumored link to the recent disappearance of Lucille Rossi, who has ties to the Italian mob, cannot be confirmed," says Mike Engel, sober, earnest.)

Some old guy on Fox is super pissed off that I'm getting air time and attention. "The fact is, and I don't mean to be crass, but there's only one reason someone like the Joker would continue to associate with this young woman," he says. "Is she his girlfriend? Nobody knows, but something's screwy about this."

"The police reports indicate that she was an unwilling party in the previous—" starts the woman who was interviewing him, but he cuts her off stubbornly:

"Gotham cops couldn't even keep their commissioner from getting kidnapped. I tell you, Laura—one time's unlucky. Twice is suspicious. We're going on, what, five times this girl's been 'abducted'"—he actually uses air quotes—"by the Joker and we still think she's somehow innocent? Please. Mark my words, when we get to the truth, we'll find out she had a hand in all this."

"You're not _totally_ wrong," I admit begrudgingly as I change the channel.

All of the networks are using that same old student ID photo of me that I'd seen last night, and I'm kind of startled at how little it looks like the face I see every day in the mirror. I used to have a softness to my face, some baby fat, but that's all gone now—I've lost a bit of weight without realizing it over the last two years, and now the bones of my face are sharp and stark. I have brownish purple shadows like smears of paint in the hollows under my eyes now, too. They only used to appear when I'd pulled an all-nighter, but they're a permanent fixture these days, regardless of how much rest I get. I stare at my younger, smiling face on the screen and realize that despite the fact that only a few years have passed since then, I look like a totally different person—someone defiant, suspicious, mean.

I can't quite puzzle out how I feel about that—it seems weird, even a little unfair that I've changed so much in such a short time, but at the same time, I sort of prefer the angrier, sharper-looking version of myself, because she's prepared for the ugliness of the world, can handle it better—so I just think _at least it'll be harder for people to realize I am who I am_ and flip through the channels some more.

No leads on Gordon. No sign of the Joker. Batman's name isn't even mentioned. Fox News has a timer counting down the hours until the time the Joker gave the police to produce me is up, which I don't think is particularly helpful.

Once I think I've gleaned all the information I'm likely to get from the news, I turn off the TV. It's nine AM, and I need to make my decision.

_It's already made, though, isn't it?_ I ask myself darkly, leaning forward to rest my elbows on my knees, brooding. I was in the process of making it last night when I decided not to tell Batman that the Joker wanted me to come meet him. _Don't play his games,_ Batman had told me, _he sets you up to lose_ , and he's a hundred percent right, but even if I _didn't_ have weird emotional ties to the Joker that keep me in his orbit, my conscience won't allow me the luxury of sitting this one out.

I have to find a way to get to South Channel Island. I have to find out what he meant when he said I would have a chance to save Gordon.

If I'm going to do this, though, there are a few hurdles I have to get over first.

For starters: the trip to this place had been in the dark, and my sense of direction isn't particularly good if the sun's not up, but judging from the neighborhood and our proximity to the harbor I'd been able to see on the way in, I'm somewhere in the shittier part of downtown. I'm further away from South Channel Island now than I had been when the Joker dropped me off last night, and once again: I have no money, and this time I can't exactly call Batman for a ride.

Of course—and this is the second major holdup—even if I _had_ money, I have no idea how far I'd actually get, given that my face is everywhere and the cops are actively looking for me. I look different from the picture the news networks are using, but not _that_ different, and the cops have a mugshot to go by that's much more recent. I'm not sure it'll be that easy to travel unnoticed.

Then again, this is Gotham. It's a huge city, and it's known for being particularly antisocial even _for_ a huge city. Because they're forced to share so much space with others, people take measures to distance themselves, not making eye contact, not intervening in strangers' business, tuning out all day every day just so they can get where they're going and do what they have to do. I bet if I'm careful to keep my head down, I can pass as just another person in the crowd.

Given that I have some semblance of an idea, I work on the "blending" thing first. My hair is easily the most recognizable thing about me, with its heavy curls and the kind of eye-catching orangey-brown red that's hard to get out of a box or a bottle, so I need to hide it. The linens on the safehouse bed are soft black cotton. I strip the case from a pillow, bring it to the bathroom mirror, and get to work.

It takes a couple of tries, but I eventually manage to get the pillowcase to look like a passable hair wrap, hiding everything but a few short, faint wisps peeking out from my hairline. The safehouse doesn't have any clothes that I can find, meaning the pale skin of my arms and shoulders and my neck with its slightly-tattered bandage are all still pretty exposed, and now that I've added a black hair wrap to my black top and pants and shoes, I look kind of like a goth Rosie the Riveter. Still, that's a lot better than looking like _Emma Vane, Joker victim/accomplice._

That's one issue taken care of ( _I fucking hope_ ). Now for the next.

It's nine-thirty and I have two and a half hours to get where I need to be. I wander around the safehouse, trying to think, and I end up in the kitchen, eyeballing all those shiny appliances.

_Ah._

A couple of minutes later, before I can talk myself out of it (laying low and staying safe would be _so_. _much_. _easier_ , and Batman wouldn't be mad at me, and it is _such_ a tempting option, but I owe it to Gordon to try my best), I'm at the entryway, shiny aluminum toaster under one arm, psyching myself up to go. It occurs to me that Batman might have this place wired for surveillance—after seeing that tank, nothing would surprise me—so I turn back to look over the room one more time, flash a peace sign, mouth " _Sorry_ ," and then I go. When I close the door behind me, it beeps, and the panel turns red. _No going back now._

Up the stairs, into the daylight. The rain has cleared out, at least for now, and there's actually some morning sunshine—this isn't the part of the city where skyscrapers block it out. Just like last night, this space seems unused, unpopulated, but I can hear the ambient noise of people driving and talking and living their lives, starting just a few blocks from here, so I set out.

I don't have to go very far before I reach the kind of Gotham I recognize, full of walkers and loiterers and 7/11s and stoops. Moments later, I spot a pawn shop, and I enter it carefully, pausing just inside to make sure that the owner isn't watching the news. He's not—a football game is on—and so I go up to the counter and set down the toaster.

The guy tries to screw me. He offers me two dollars for the thing—which is one of those extremely fancy, unnecessarily high-tech appliances, was probably bought new for like seventy-five and could _easily_ be resold for at least twenty-five—and I get that it's how pawn shops work, but I need at least three bucks for a train ticket and I wouldn't say no to a little extra in case I find myself in this position again, so I'm not having it.

I'm trying to argue him up (while also not attracting attention to myself, which is hard, because his lowballing is pissing me off and making it hard for me to keep my voice down) when another customer who was browsing intervenes and offers me five instead. I'm going to take the offer, too, if only to stick it to the pawn shop guy, but the guy in question sees his easy money slipping away and amends his offer to ten bucks, which, when the other customer declines to bid higher, I accept. I leave the shop after just a few minutes, with an aged, limp ten-dollar bill in my pocket, feeling optimistic: I have the money I need to get to the island, and no one appeared to recognize me. That's a solid win.

It's after ten now. I don't waste any time getting to the station. The ride won't take longer than thirty minutes, I estimate, but the trains are often late, and this is Gotham, so any number of things could happen to hold me up. It crosses my mind that the last time the Joker maneuvered things so I got on a train didn't end so well, but I'll cross that bridge if it comes. I doubt it will. He might have a part outlined for me in all this, but I'm not his central focus this time—I don't actually think he's been having me watched. I don't think he'd have been able to resist the temptation of Batman if he had.

The train is late, but not crowded, though I'm sure that'll change as we trek through midtown. I score a window seat and enjoy, while I can, the feeling of the sun on my face. I'm under-rested, I can feel it more now that I'm sitting still than I did this morning, humming with nerves and adrenaline and hyper-aware that I needed to come up with a plan. I'm not drowsy (the anxiety is still present, keeping me alert), but my body is tired. Five hours wasn't sufficient. _Par for the course_ , I think with a sigh, gazing out the window. _Might as well be resigned to it._

I make it to the island with plenty of time to spare. I've been keeping an eye out for suspicious looks or whispers, but as I'd hoped, the people who aren't in immediate danger seem more interested in getting to work than trying to catch someone who _might be_ involved in a Joker plot wherein the victims seemed limited to the police, at least so far. Nobody seems to be eyeing me too carefully. I get off the train and wander over to the park, pick a bench, and sit down.

Now it's a waiting game.

I don't have a watch or a phone, and the time seems to crawl by interminably slowly. The park is relatively populated, full of joggers and dog-walkers and power-walking moms. There's a playground in my eyeline, a few hundred yards deeper into the park, but it still makes me uncomfortable. Children shouldn't have any place in the games the Joker plays, but of course, _shouldn't_ doesn't mean _don't_ , as I know from gruesome experience. I'd feel better if there were none nearby.

I spend my time trying to identify the person he'll send for me (an unmasked clown? A civilian pressed and manipulated into service?), but the only looks I get are somewhat accusatory glances from passers-by bothered at my staring, and no one makes contact. The tension creeps up, and up, slowly, until I'm _sure_ it's half-past noon by now and something is very, very wrong.

I nearly jump out of my skin when I feel something press against the bared back of my neck and a voice says, "Reach for the sky."

It doesn't take me long to recover from the scare and realize that someone's fucking with me, that whatever's pressed against my neck has the quality of flesh rather than metal or plastic, so reflexively, I say, "Go fuck yourself."

And I hear him laugh.

It's not the loud, attention-drawing cackle most people know, but the soft chuckle, mostly air, that I'm familiar with. It has a startling effect either way. I wasn't expecting him to come _himself_. This can't be good.

I start to turn, to rise, but his hand moves from my neck and goes to my shoulder, carelessly brushing the bandaged bite mark on the way, and presses. _Stay down._ I obey, and his hand drifts away. A second later, he's circled the bench and plops down beside me, arm stretched out along the bench behind my shoulders, propping his ankle up on his opposite knee. "You look like a _nun_ ," he says by way of greeting.

I glance furtively sideways at him and see why he's risking an appearance in broad daylight. He's dressed casually in black, like me, pants and t-shirt and jacket, and his hair is hidden, like mine, though he has the luxury of a knit beanie instead of having to make do with a pillowcase. The important part, though, the detail that matters the most, is that his face is bound up in a seamless fabric mask that covers him neck to nose, hiding the scars.

" _You_ look like somebody who's way too serious about snowboarding," I say after a moment. He chuckles again, but his eyes are off me, scanning the park's patrons and leaving me free to stare for a little bit. His getup is a little eye-catching, but admittedly way less so than the purple suit and painted face, the scars. He looks like he could be an activist, maybe, or a particularly fed-up celebrity. Still, it strikes me as unnecessarily risky. All it takes is a particularly paranoid (or astute) civilian making a worried phone call, just one cop deciding that with the Joker on the loose, they can't risk ignoring a tip on a man walking the streets with his face hidden, and things could go south _very_ quickly.

The tension in my body, far from disappearing, ratchets up further. The Joker is watching the playground. The skin around his eyes is brownish—artificial darkness, I think, from carelessly-removed makeup. "What's the plan?" I ask, suddenly too antsy to stay silent and wait for a cue, despite the fact that I know he loves taking any chance to fuck with me and I'm giving him a prime opening. "You look like Banksy. Someone's gonna call the cops."

He glances at me again. I can tell from the creases at the corners of his eyes that he's grinning under the mask. "Emma, are you _worried_ about me?" he asks quietly, though the low volume of his voice can't quite hide his delight.

It takes a bit of restraint for me to keep myself from huffing and flopping back against the bench with my arms crossed like a sullen teenager at his teasing. He's out for a reaction, like always, and I don't want to give him what he wants—but I feel my stare sharpen in irritation. He sees it, too—I can hear it in his soft laugh as he returns his gaze to the playground. "Of _course_ not," he answers himself.

A few seconds tick by. The sunlight is warm; dogs are barking and the kids are laughing across the park. "You worry too much about children," he says.

"What the hell does _that_ mean?"

"You _know_ what it means," he says mildly. His arm is heavy on my shoulders; his fingers begin to toy with my earlobe, and I fight to keep from shuddering.

_Shit._ I didn't mean to tip him off. It's true, of course, that my primary concern right now is that a firefight in the park will endanger the kids playing nearby, but to express that to him (or _worse_ , to be caught trying to hide that from) him would spark his perverse nature and ensure that they're in _more_ danger. _Shit_.

"There's too many of 'em anyway," he says conversationally. "They could _use_ a good culling. The earth would _thank_ me."

"Because you're so invested in protecting the environment," I fire at him, and he giggles: _good one_. "Anyway, I thought you had something going on already. James Gordon. Does the name ring a bell?"

He leans closer to me. "I'm, uh… an _excellent_ multi-tasker," he says, tugging hard on my earlobe—then he relinquishes it with a sigh, ghosting his fingertips up over the shell of my ear. This time I _do_ shudder. "But _fair_ enough," he relents, and rises suddenly, his arm slipping away from me. "Let's vamoose."

_And isn't this just like him,_ I think tiredly as I get up to follow him, further into the park but away from the playground, _to turn this all on its head so that I'm leaving the safety of the crowd, going off alone with him and I'm_ _ **grateful**_ _for it_. It's a neat little flourish, but an unnecessary one. Just like he and I both knew I'd make this meeting in the first place, we both know I'm going to keep following him until I get what I want.

It puts me at a marked disadvantage. I need to find a way to turn that around on him. Until I do that, all I can really do is fall into step beside him as we move along.

He's still limping, though I only spot it because I'm looking for it. I'm about to ask him how it's healing (half out of genuine curiosity, because I was the one to tend to it first, and half out of spite, because I'm annoyed at him for calling me out on being worried about the kids) when something occurs to me that I haven't had the time or energy to really think about before now.

"What happened to Victor?" I demand abruptly.

The Joker blinks at me, although he might just be batting his eyelashes; it's hard to tell with the mask. When I don't elaborate—he doesn't need the help—his forehead furrows in a frown. " _Victor_?" He says the name like he's talking about something he scraped off his shoe (which: understandable).

"Yeah, you know, Victor. Big, ugly, tried to kill me?"

" _Ohhh_. Victor."

"Yeah, Victor." He's teasing me, and I relax into it, knowing that a show of impatience will just draw the ordeal out. "Did you _get_ him? Or did he slip the noose?"

The Joker hums beneath his mask. His hands have been tucked away in his pockets as he walks, but now he lifts one and wiggles it noncommittally. "I, uh… tracked him for a bit, but he's not a problem for now."

I give it a second, but when that appears to be all he's planning to share, I scoff and shake my head. "Oh, sure. Not a problem at all."

His shoulder brushes mine; when I look at him, his eyes look smiley again. " _You're_ just mad because he took a shot at you," he tells me.

I scoff again, a little more bitterly this time. "I'm _mad_ because he outweighs me by a hundred pounds, I _stabbed_ him the other day, and he's _god_ -knows-where now. This is going to bite me in the ass— _me,_ specifically. I know it."

"Ehhh," he says, a sound of polite disagreement. "Give yourself a little more credit. You've faced down a _lot_ of people bigger than you. _You_ —you got the best of Victor once al _ready_."

"Yeah, when he wasn't expecting much of a fight," I say, trying to sound blasé instead of fretful. "Next time, he'll be prepared."

"Well," the Joker says, sounding aggressively chipper, "then maybe Batman'll save you. He can't _stand_ to see a good innocent go to _waste_ , y'know."

I'm silent for a moment, thinking of the probably-huge mistake I made when I left the safehouse this morning, then I mutter, "Yeah, I'm thinking I used up my store of Batman's goodwill last night."

He laughs, light and a little triumphant, _ooh-hoo-hoo_. "Whatdjya do to piss _Batman_ off?"

I don't want to blow up Batman's safe spot for no reason, so I think it best to keep the details vague. "He tried to help me get clear of this mess, but surprise, surprise—I basically said 'thanks, but no thanks' and left this morning to meet you anyway."

Too late, I see his eyes, narrowed with suspicion or anger, or maybe something else, something I can't read without seeing the rest of his face. _Whatever_ that look means, I know I've fucked up somehow.

We're passing a park bathroom, shaded by heavy green trees and, for the moment, we're out of view of anyone else. He doesn't say a word, just grabs me by the arm and draws me roughly into the men's. I'm too startled (and suddenly afraid) to make a sound.

He pulls me along the row of stalls, shoving me in the one at the end, stepping in behind me, and twisting around to lock the door. The space is so small that his sharp elbow collides with my shoulder as he turns, then again as he turns back to me, and I shrink back against the side of the stall, trying to put a slightly more comfortable amount of space between us.

He's not interested in maintaining that space. After a brief pause to yank the mask down off his face (his scars jump out at me, their shades of pink looking more livid than I remember, even though it's only been a couple of days since I've seen them in this state, unobscured and clean of paint), he moves closer, close enough that one of his thighs rests lightly against mine. He plants his hand beside my head, blocking my view of the door, and he stares at me.

I stare back, silent, searching his now-exposed face for some insight as to this sudden shift in the mood. The look in his eyes is definitely anger, though he twists his mouth into a garish smile now, either trying unsuccessfully to take the edge off or trying _very_ successfully to make himself look even scarier.

_Shit_ , I think, tilting my head in a questioning manner that I hope will tip him off to the fact that whatever I did, it wasn't on purpose—not that it would matter to him. _Shit. What did I do?_ I knew the Joker had a weird _thing_ with Batman, sure, but I didn't think he'd take issue with me making contact with him. The Joker _left me in the Narrows_ ; what the hell was I _supposed_ to do?

He's never demanded loyalty from me. He knows he won't get it, and besides, I've always gotten the impression that he thinks it's _fun_ , the fact that my feelings about him are so conflicted, the mutual understanding we have that I'll turn on him at any time if I can keep my nose clean doing it. I would have thought that Batman counts as fair game, especially since the Joker has taken my only other contact on the right side of the law out of the game.

Apparently not.

He's leaning forward now, dipping his head to duck around my jaw, and I feel his breath, warm and foreign in my ear. He says, so softly that I can barely hear him despite his nearness, "Nod _yes_ or shake your head _no_. You ran into Batman last night?"

He leans back a little, fixes me with a narrow stare, and I stare back for a second, belatedly realizing what the fuck the quiet is about. _He thinks Batman's listening somehow._ It seems a little paranoid to me, but I don't think I have much choice here but to play along, and I nod.

In a flash he's back in my ear, his scarred cheek nestled rough against mine, his chin in the crook of my neck. In that same soft tone, he asks, "Did he _touch_ you, Emma?"

This time he doesn't pull back to watch me, just waits—we're close enough that he'll feel whatever motion I make, can gather his answer from that. This is shitty for me, because I have no clue if the question is meant to be lascivious or not, and without his expression to guide me, or the usual lilt of his voice, I don't have much to go off of.

I decide to take his question at face value. If he's got a problem with that, he can rephrase it. Windows in the form of strips of plastic line the tops of the restroom wall, letting in the sunlight, and I stare at one of these and try to avoid thinking about where this might be going as I nod, slowly.

A low rumbling sound comes from somewhere deep in his chest, a little louder than his voice has been, and his hand is suddenly fitted around my throat, the heel of his palm pressed against the bandage, making the bite mark beneath it ache dully. His grip isn't too tight, but that looks like it's going to change in a split second, and I'm drawing breath to scream, because even if there's not actually anyone around to hear it, he seems like he wants me to be quiet and I can at least spite him on my way out, then—

—the door to the bathroom opens.

The scream never manifests; it dies in my throat. Suddenly, the idea that Batman might be listening doesn't seem so absurd, and I'm frozen in indecision. If it's _not_ Batman, if it's just an ordinary civilian, then screaming will just render _them_ dead and me in trouble, and if it _is_ Batman, he'll quickly figure out where we are anyway. Right?

The Joker slowly lifts his head as footsteps come close to us, and turns slightly, his profile to me, glaring black-eyed at the door as if his gaze can bore through it and reveal the newcomer to him. The sunlight catches the fine, curling hairs at the nape of his neck that don't fit into the hat, turning them golden.

After a second, the footsteps stop. Then comes the unmistakable sound of a zipper being pulled, and a stream of piss hitting the urinal.

_Never thought I'd be relieved to hear_ _ **that**_ , I think, but I am. If in the unlikely event that Batman _had_ showed up here in broad daylight, ready to punch through the bathroom stall and free me, we'd still be up shit creek as far as Gordon was concerned. Even though the Joker is a little scarier now than he was five minutes ago, I'm still committed to see this thing through.

The Joker refocuses on me. Apparently no longer concerned with the man sharing the room with us now that he knows he's not a threat, he distinctly mouths, "Show me."

I scowl at him, resenting this interrogation that I don't fully understand, and he wets his lips rapidly before tightening the hand around my throat in a clear threat.

" _Fine_ ," I mouth back at him, and then, pointedly, I grab the hand at my throat, pulling it away, and he allows it. Feeling mutinous, though, I don't drop it once it comes loose. Instead, starting with the lightest touch I can remember from the night before, I move it to my shoulder, then look pointedly at him. _There_.

His eyes are hard and bright. He understands _exactly_ what I'm doing.

I lower his hand, folding it around my opposite forearm, the way Batman had taken hold of it to help me into the tank. _There_.

I pick up his other hand, and he doesn't resist, pliable as clay, his eyes tracking every move I make. I move both his hands up to the sides of my shoulders, where Batman had pulled me to my feet in order to hide me behind the HVAC unit, and he clasps me in imitation of his rival, though his fingers are bonier, pinching more, making me flinch.

I take a breath—this next thing is something I wouldn't dare to do in my right mind, and even now, with his implicit permission, I have to gear myself up to it. I grab his wrists, peel his hands off my shoulders, and then pull them around my back even as I step forward in-between them. Moving carefully and a little awkwardly so I don't jab him with my elbows, I cross his arms over my mid-back, then, as he tightens them, I go up on tiptoe and close the little remaining space between our chests, wrapping my arms around his neck.

I'm hugging the Joker, he's hugging me back, and despite the fact that there's a perfectly good reason for it (at least, I _assume_ there is—once again, I'm not privy to his inner monologue), this is, maybe, the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me. He's so tense beneath my arms that I have to fight the instinct to tense up as well, to yank away as quickly as possible. From the smell of him, I can tell that whoever originally owned this jacket smoked cigarettes and also used the cheap detergent you can buy right at the laundromat. I can feel his chest shifting against mine as he breathes, and if I focus, I can feel his heartbeat, thudding away against my collarbone.

This feels _so_ fucking different from hugging Batman. This feels like what I imagine holding a rattlesnake by the neck must feel like. The Joker's hands are uncharacteristically gentle against me, and rather than being comforted by that, I'm more on edge than ever. I'm convinced that if I make one false move right now, I won't live to regret it.

The guy who came in to use the bathroom left half a minute ago, but neither of us acknowledge his absence, standing together as silently as if noise or sudden motion might still betray our presence.

The Joker's shoulders suddenly and violently twitch beneath my arms, and I jump a mile, letting him go instantly. He's releasing me as well, and even as we break apart he grabs my shoulder, pushing me back against the side of the stall. I think for a split second that the proximity has freaked him out, but he leans in again rapidly, not coming across as the least bit squeamish, and speaks an instruction in my ear, no less emphatic for its quietness: "Be. _Still_."

I obey, standing in silence as he grasps my right hand, lifts it so that it's stretched out at shoulder height, and he runs his fingers down the length of my arm—then again, and again, feeling a slightly different span of skin every time.

_He's searching me_ , I realize, later than I probably should (in my defense, I'm not used to this much _touching_ , certainly not without the intent to harm me in some way, and it's a little difficult to concentrate as his calloused fingers slide over my skin). _I think I'd notice if Batman planted some sort of bug or tracker on me._

Apparently, he doesn't find anything on either arm, and puts his hands on my shoulders, abruptly turning me around. He palms my shoulders, runs his hands greedily down the back of my shirt, grasps at my hips, feeling everything, and I bow my head and close my eyes, gritting my teeth tightly and trying to ignore the fact that this whole ordeal is giving me a headrush, that I could be—if I let myself—kind of into it.

He swipes his thumbs up the back of my neck, then his hand drifts lower, over the base, above the line of my shirt. And he stops.

His hands lift away from me, and I feel the scrape of his fingernail and a tacky pinch, like someone just pulled a piece of scotch tape from my skin. I lift my head and open my eyes and turn to see that he's holding a tiny peach-colored square between his thumb and forefinger and giving me a look that's _extremely_ self-satisfied. I puff out a disbelieving little exhale and shift closer to him, and now I can see what looks like the world's tiniest microchip affixed to the center of the adhesive square.

I glance up at the Joker brow furrowed in disbelief, and he twitches his head to the side— _it's Batman, what're you gonna do_ —and then steps towards the toilet, kicking the lid up, and brings the little bug close to his mouth. "Nicely done, _Bat_ man," he says, and for once, the compliment sounds genuine. The affable quality of his voice vanishes, though, and his voice drops low for the next part: "But keep your hands off. She's already mine."

He drops the bug into the water, kicks the flush lever, and turns to me, grabbing me by the arm with one hand and pulling his mask up over his face with the other. "Move. _Move_ ," he snaps when he sees me opening my mouth to argue, and I've never been one to shut up and do what I'm told, but his eyes look angry again, and in the end, I decide—for once—that there's time for arguing later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emma's such a little garbage pail kid, lol, stealing Batman's toaster to pawn for cash. I can just imagine him watching the security footage, "why, you little..."
> 
> Also forgot to mention that I took the design of Batman's safe house- in part- from the compound in _Ex Machina_ , which is a wonderful movie. Oh, and I listened to Max Richter's [soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6BxCiKDfvo&index=1&list=PLv1udYiEW0AMNkT2UER_gc4o790TG6Hqs) for the TV show _Taboo_ a LOT while I was writing this story, and this and the next few chapters in particular- the atmosphere fits extremely well, so you may want to give it a spin next time you're reading.
> 
> Next chapter is one of my favorites in the story (and so is the chapter after that one). It features one of my all-time favorite Joker/Emma argu-sations. She's bolstered after hanging out with Batman and she's ready to do some yellin'. You're all so concerned about her, it touches my heart (and she'd be kind of encouraged if she knew- baffled, but encouraged). Till next time!


	7. Chapter 7

If Batman's listening to us, the way the Joker seems to think he is, then it's not a stretch to imagine that he knows exactly where to find us, and as we exit into the sunlight, I half expect to see a huge black figure hurtling towards us.

I don't. The place is as quiet and unpopulated as it was before we went in.

The Joker slides his hand down my arm till it's clasped tight against my wrist and takes off, dragging me along with him. I don't normally have any trouble keeping up with his usual unhurried, loping pace, but his stride is quicker now, making use of his much longer legs. It's a bit more of a struggle for me, and my breath is coming shorter by the time we leave the park.

He opts to leave via the waterfront exit opposite the way we came in. There are a lot of cars parked at meters along the street, and I don't realize he's heading directly towards one—a filthy, beat-up, painfully ugly Oldsmobile—until he's stopped to yank the back door open and pushes me into the seat.

I go along, thinking _right, smart move, best to get away from here as quickly as possible_ and fully expecting him to climb in after me, but he doesn't. He closes the door, bangs the roof with a fist, and the car takes off from the curb, leaving him behind.

I whip around to look through the back window to see him turning away and heading in the opposite direction. "Oh, _son of a bitch_ ," I say out loud.

It makes sense to split up, of course—if Batman is somehow pursuing us, unseen, then he can't catch up with _both_ of us. My guess is he'll go after the Joker: he's the dangerous one, and he's the one with all the valuable information. He also, however, is notoriously tricky to pin down, and if he manages to slip the noose, he'll have me stashed safely away in whatever location he's chosen.

Still, I don't appreciate being handed into the care of one of his henchmen without a word of discussion (I may sometimes be able to strike something closely resembling enjoyment in the Joker's presence, but that doesn't change the fact that literally _all_ of his associates make me profoundly uncomfortable), and there's no doubt in my mind that I won't lay eyes on Gordon till this whole Batman scare is over. Who knows how long _that'll_ take?

All afternoon, it turns out.

I spend hours criss-crossing the city. The first guy drives me uptown, then hands me off to a different guy driving a different car, who takes me back downtown. Then it's another car to the Palisades, then back to South Channel Island, and on and on for _hours_. One switch-off even occurs in a tunnel, on the way to the Palisades—my current driver screeches to a stop midway through as a car in the opposite lane does the same, and he barks at me to get out and hop in the other car, fast. My concerns about what could happen if Batman finds us still apply, and I obey.

Theoretically, I could sleep, but that would require letting down my guard, and I'm not gonna do _that_. Not that all of the drivers set off alarm bells for me (the one that's driving me through midtown around lunchtime buys McDonalds for me, which I appreciate, given that I never know when my next meal is coming when I'm involved with the Joker), but they _work for the Joker_ , and the majority of them strike me as some combination of dumb, violent, or crazy. Even if the Joker bothered to issue a don't-touch rule to these guys (and I doubt he did—he's never been one to worry overmuch about my safety), there's no guarantee that any of them are wise or sane enough to obey it, and I stay alert, ready to fight if I have to.

The hours tick by, and as we pass through mid-afternoon, I get more and more stressed out. Detective March didn't tell me the exact time the Joker issued his twenty-four hour ultimatum yesterday, but based on context clues I put it at about 3 PM… which comes and goes, and I'm anxious enough to speak to my driver about it—although this one in particular has been watching me with over-bright eyes the whole time I've been in the car with him, staring at me through the rearview mirror whenever he doesn't have to look at the road.

"Are you supposed to be taking me to Commissioner Gordon?" I ask outright.

"Shh," he responds gently.

I shake my head in annoyance. "Well, then, what time are we supposed to meet back up with your boss?"

" _Shhhh_ ," he says, again with that eerie delicacy, and I throw up my hands in frustration and sit back again. Useless.

_He better not be doing anything_ , I think, crossing my arms tight across my chest. _He told me he'd give me a chance to save him._ The Joker's not an honest man, but he seems to view lying outright as somewhat artless. Still, there's no guarantee with him.

_Gordon could be dead right now and I'd never know_. I shake off the thought before it can go too far. Worrying will solve nothing.

I think instead about Batman. He knew I was planning to leave the safe house, that's no surprise, but I can't help but wonder if he thought it'd be out of concern for Gordon, or because I couldn't manage to stay away from the Joker. He seems to have a generous enough spirit to believe the former, but he's also sharp—sharp enough to know that it's more like a combination of the two.

My mind goes back to that moment in the park bathroom when I was using the Joker's hand to trace Batman's touches, the way he had looked at me, eyes black with something heated and mean, and a cold shiver scuttles down my spine. Whatever he was feeling, it looked a lot like jealousy, but at that moment, I'd be hard-pressed to say if it was centered on Batman or on me.

_Probably Batman_ , I think darkly, staring out the window. _Which means he might be in a punishing mood once his guys bring me back to him._

There's nothing for it, though. Despite the powerful bout of nerves I'm feeling at the prospect of dealing with him after one of his plans has gone awry, I'm in too deep to bail now.

I'm chauffeured around the city till nightfall. The henchman driving me tells me to get out, and I obey, expecting another change and startled and wary when he follows. We're outside of a little house at the very edge of an empty neighborhood somewhere in midtown—I'd stopped paying attention to the exact streets hours ago.

The guy grabs my arm, I pull away immediately, and he rolls his eyes. "Fine," he says, and points to the house. "Let's go."

I trail behind him, still confused, eyeing the house. Red brick, one-story… it looks like a perfectly ordinary, well-kept single-family home, nothing like the condemned projects or closed-down businesses or old warehouses I've come to expect when dealing with the Joker. _He can't be here, can he?_

The henchman reaches the stairs leading up to the tiny porch out front and turns to see that I'm several steps behind, which makes him scowl. "Move your ass," he says, and I glare at him, making no move to pick up the pace. _This is a trap_ , I think adamantly. It could be the Joker's doing, or maybe the henchman is working his own angle, but everything in me is telling me that something is wrong.

He ascends the stairs and knocks on the door, and I remain a few steps down from him, out of easy reach, trying to figure out what to do. When another equally sketchy dude answers the door, the first one turns and grabs for my arm, but that's where I draw the line. "Okay, no," I say, dodging his hand and taking a quick step back "This is fucked."

"Boss's orders," the guy says insistently, and reaches for me again.

"Do not fucking _touch_ me," I say, trying to dodge him even as he grabs my arm, hard.

I hear a low growl that sounds like it's coming from the house, but I'm busy twisting at my arm and firing a punch at the henchman's throat—he catches the blow on the shoulder and swears at me, someone hisses " _Christ_ ," and then the Joker comes out of the house, almost too fast for me to recognize him—the shock of his presence hits me like a sheet of ice water, then he snakes an arm around my waist, lifts me off my feet, pinning me to his hip, and hauls me up the rest of the stairs and inside.

Now that I've realized that he is, in fact, here, I quit fighting. Well, I _sort_ of quit fighting. I grip at his shoulder with one arm to relieve the pressure on the rest of me (because his bony wrist is digging into my hip and it _hurts_ ) and I say "Put me _down_."

He's not listening to me, too busy muttering bad-naturedly to himself. I catch the words "—done right, gotta do it yourself—" before he swings me unceremoniously over the back of a couch. I land on my back on the cushions, and he props an elbow against the couch back so he can lean over and jab his finger towards my face. " _Stay there_ ," he orders, like I'm a misbehaving dog, and then turns to deal with the henchmen.

I can't say I like his tone, but things could be worse, so other than looking mutinous, I don't really react. I push myself upright and look around, reaching up to pull the wrap from my hair in the process.

_This place has got to belong to a civilian_ is my first thought. And not only a civilian, but one with a decent amount of income: houses in midtown don't come cheap, even little ones like this. The short entryway opens directly up into the living room, which (aside from the white couch I find myself perched on) is tastefully decorated, with dark brown walnut floors and gray walls and furniture and accents mostly matching one of those two colors. From the couch, I can see a small kitchen and a doorway to a hallway passage that quickly angles out of sight—goes to a bedroom or two, I'd bet.

The room is spotless, nothing out of place, which makes the hooks and hanging nails on the walls stick out. Family photos that have been removed, I think, though it doesn't seem the Joker would have cared enough to take them down. Drawing a mustache on every face or slapping purple paint across the glass, _that_ I could see.

I look over the back of the couch to the entryway again, where the three men are clustered. The henchman who brought me here is trying to come in, but the Joker is blocking the door. " _No_ , no, no," he says, "your job today is _done_. Go home. Keep your phone on." Done with that guy, he turns to the other and says, " _You_ —take a walk. Be back here in thirty minutes, understand?"

The guy glances at me, but dutifully replies, "Yes, boss" and exits the apartment. The Joker closes and deadbolts the door behind him, and then turns and leans back against it, heaving an exaggerated sigh of exhaustion. "You would not be _lieve_ how hard it is to find good help these days," he announces.

"I bet," I say reflexively as I look him over. He looks like he's in the process of doing himself up for a public appearance: he's not wearing his jacket, or greatcoat, but they're the only things missing; his emerald green vest clashes spectacularly with his lavender shirt and violet tie tucked away beneath it, purple gloves cover his hands, and the makeup is freshly smeared over his face. I note that he's opted for a belt instead of suspenders, and choose not to think further on that topic.

Still pressed back against the door, he reaches towards me, index finger outstretched, and I see the silvery sparkle of cufflinks at his wrist, the slight gap in his sleeve beneath it. "You and _I_ ," he says, gesturing back and forth between us, "need to talk."

"You're damn right we do," I say, getting up from the couch to try and even up the odds a little bit. I'm not much better off standing, but it feels better than sitting and waiting for an attack.

For a moment, there's no sound but the ticking of the living room clock as we stare at one another. Then, the Joker pushes off from the door and prowls into the room, restless, swiping a hand through his already-messy hair, and I know immediately what's got him so antsy. It's Batman—how could it not be? I turn as he passes me, unwilling to let him out of my eyeline, and he paces towards the kitchen before turning back to me, using his left hand to straighten the fingers of the glove on his right. "So," he says, his tone perfectly conversational but his eyes burning in a way that makes me wary, " _Bat_ man."

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous, but I'm all the way across the room from him for now, and the anxiety of the day is threatening to bubble over, so I think _to hell with it_ and say, "So _Jim Gordon_."

His brows furrow; his mouth drops into a clownish frown. "What _about_ him?" he asks, shaking his head.

"You told me I'd have a chance to save him. You gave the cops twenty-four hours to hand me over, which they did _not_ do, like thirty hours ago. Which one's true?"

"Mmm… both."

I feel a sudden compulsion to stomp my foot, which I have never done before in my life. I quell it with some difficulty, put my hands on my hips, and I demand, "Where is he?"

The Joker waves his hand dismissively, taking a step towards me. "We'll get to that later. What I want to know right now is how _you_ —" he jabs his finger in my direction as he takes another step—"ended up cuddled up with _Batman_ last night. It seems like it must be a…" He pauses and tongues the inside of his bottom lip, eyes shooting up to the ceiling in a bid for inspiration before returning to me a second later: " _fascinating_ story."

I shift my weight from one foot to the other and remove my hands from my hips to cross my arms. I know I'm betraying my nerves, but I can't quite help it. "If I tell you, will you tell me what's going on with Gordon?"

The Joker's eyes go wide and white against the black paint. He moves his right hand to the place on his chest where his heart should be, draws an 'x,' and then raises his right hand up solemnly. I eye him for a moment, wondering if I can trust the promise, before eventually deciding it doesn't matter either way.

"Not that fascinating, actually," I say, working hard to keep my tone casual. "When you dropped me off in the Narrows with no phone, no money, and with my only friend in Gotham kidnapped by _you_ —thanks for that, by the way—I figured I had two options: the cops or Batman. Batman seemed… _marginally_ less likely to lock me up in a cell for the rest of my life, so I stole some lighter fluid from a bodega, found my way up to a high-ish roof, and set a fire. Batman stopped by after about half an hour."

The Joker has been watching me raptly, and at my conclusion, he takes a swift couple of steps towards me, prompting me to move just as quickly backwards until I end up with my back against a bookshelf. He halts, still a few feet away, and says, " _Then_?"

"Then…" I say, and sigh. " _Then_ , he tried to see if I knew anything about your plans, and when I told him I didn't, he told me he'd take me someplace safe. He did that, then left."

The Joker takes a break from thoughtfully chewing the back of a scar to say, quickly and in a tone of lighthearted curiosity that I don't trust for a second, "What about meeting with me? You tip him off about _that_?"

"No. I didn't have to. He knew I wasn't telling him everything."

"And he _still_ provided a, uh… _roof_ over your head?"

I've been doing a pretty good job holding his gaze, but at that, I glance down at my shoes. "Yeah, well," I mumble, "he's got that hero complex. It's kind of his thing." It's not even that I'm lying to him—I'm not. I just don't want to break down Batman's numerous kindnesses to me, to lay them open for him to pick through and pronounce them as ugly and self-serving as anything and everything else. As much as Batman's a hero, kind even in his stoicism, the Joker is a villain, joyfully splattering muck across as many good things as he can touch. I don't owe him this.

When I glance up at him, his lips are pursed and he's nodding a little. He knows I'm not telling _him_ everything, either, but I don't plan to go any further into it, so I think it's best to change the subject. I draw a deep breath and then ask, "Jim Gordon?"

It takes him a second to come back from whatever pit his mind's disappeared into, and when he does, the expression of faint disgust that touches his face makes it obvious that he thinks _that_ subject is pointless. Still, all but rolling his eyes, he grabs a remote control up from the coffee table, turns on the TV, and changes it to GCN. I step away from the bookshelf so I can see, though I'm still careful not to get within easy reach.

They're running a report on an art show uptown. I watch for a second, looking for relevance, and when I don't find any, I glance over at him. "Is this what you wanted me to see?"

" _Just_ …" He tosses the remote on the table with a clatter and points several times at the TV. "Wait a second."

Patiently, I obey, and after a minute, the story changes. A sober-faced anchor announces, "It has been five hours since the Joker last made contact regarding missing police commissioner Jim Gordon. Viewers will remember that at three PM yesterday, the Joker televised his threat to kill Gordon if his former hostage Emma Vane was not released from police custody and handed over to him. At approximately two-thirty this afternoon, GCN received an unmarked package that appeared to be from the Joker himself."

As she's talking, the screen cuts to a black and white video loop of a jack-in-the-box, swinging rapidly back and forth on its spring. Scratchy white letters animated over the image read "WE ARE EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES PLEASE STAND BY."

"Aside from the message, there has been no word from the Joker, Commissioner Gordon, or even Emma Vane, who was abducted from police custody by a band of masked men with no clear affiliation yesterday evening. Numerous reports that she has been sighted throughout the city are unconfirmed."

_Guess they didn't believe the poor bodega guy_ , I think, and go to grab the remote, muting the TV. "So?" I ask, turning to the Joker.

" _So_?" he mimics me unhelpfully.

"Technical difficulties—what does that mean?"

The Joker tips his head back and addresses the ceiling. "It _means_ … Batman threw a wrench in the plan." He lowers his chin, eying me again. "It's off till tomorrow."

"Okay…" I say slowly and unhappily. I have to make an effort not to make aggressive, frustrated gestures with my hands as I add, "But I still don't know what the plan _is_."

He stares at me for a long moment, hands folded behind his back, a strange little smile playing around his ruined mouth. "We'll get to that," he promises eventually. "Now—I may _play_ the fool, Em, but to go rushing off to Gordon's hiding place right after Batman's little bug trick?" He pulls his mouth into that mock frown again, shaking his head. "That goes a _li_ -ttle beyond _playing_. Be patient."

_I'm only_ _ **ever**_ _patient with you_ , I think, _if only because I have no choice_ —but it's one of those things better left unsaid. "So, what, then?" I ask, running a hand through my hair, wincing when it gets snagged on a tangle. "We sit tight and just _hang out_ till the coast is clear?"

"Well. You certainly didn't seem to mind _last_ time."

I'm focused on working my fingers carefully through the knot, but I go still for a second at the words. _Ah. There it is._ It was inevitable that the subject of the farmhouse and what happened the last time we saw each other there would come up, just as it was inevitable that he'd be the one to broach it (God knows _I_ wasn't going to). I just didn't know _when_.

I've been trying very hard and with reasonable success not to think about it. Even with Batman, I mostly skirted around it. Not only had I fucked the Joker (an idea that I thought impossible to the point that it wasn't even worth thinking about when this all began), but I can feel the temptation of him still, snaking around behind my sternum, coiled in my guts. I can't even blame it on temporary insanity: there is, and has been for some time, a split in my soul that sees me pulled in opposite directions with regards to him. I know this, and I decided a long time ago to stop focusing on the agony I feel about it—it's beyond my control. I can only try to make choices I can live with.

The Joker's watching me with a curiously hitched eyebrow. I shake off his words with a flippant " _Last_ time you hadn't kidnapped and threatened someone I care about."

"Details," he says dismissively.

"Is this what this is about? You want to play house? Fine. Hand Gordon over to the cops, alive and in one piece, and I'll stay with you. For as long as you like."

It's a facetious offer, made mostly out of frustration, but the way the Joker stares at me after I make it, I wish I hadn't. He knows it, too: after a second, he says, his voice soft and easy and low, "You would _not._ "

I drop my gaze again. I don't really have a response to that. After letting the words rest for a moment, the Joker adds, in higher, upbeat tones, "And _I_ wouldn't want you to! This, uh, this— _thing_? We have, Emma?" He prowls closer, and mindfully, I start to back up, trying to keep the same amount of distance between us. He doesn't appear to notice. "The life of it comes from a certain amount of… _push_ and _pull_. We'll never, um, _coexist_ —" he pronounces the word with disdain—"happily. That's the poi _nt_."

My back collides gently with the bookcase, and that's when he rushes me, on me before I can register his movements and flee. I just have time to jerk back, thumping against the bookshelf and knocking a little statuette to the floor, and then his arms are on either side of me, gloved hands grasping the edges of the shelf as his elbows bend to bring him in close. He moves deliberately, with a slow, long exhale through his nose, like he's been waiting for the opportunity to corner me.

"Now—" he says, and pauses to give me a wry squint, clicking his tongue thoughtfully, and I raise my chin in defiance. I'm caught, not going anywhere if he doesn't want me to, and we both know it, but I'm not quite to the worn-down point where I'm cringing away from him and asking for mercy. It'll take a while for me to get there.

The Joker appears to regain his train of thought, and ducks his head so that we're more or less eye-to-eye. "About Batman."

_God, I knew he'd latch onto this._ Of course I did. Knowing that he'd want that information was what made me cagey about it in the _first_ place, withholding it from him because it was one of the very few, very small ways I could prick at him—if not outright hurt him, then at least annoy him a little. "I told you everything," I say, doing an admirable job of holding his gaze.

"Ohhhh, no, no, _no_ ," he contradicts me before I'm even finished speaking. "See—by my reckoning, there were, uh, at _least_ a few hours you spent with him." He pauses, tilts his head to give me a conspiratorial look from the corners of his eyes. "Now, I know he's not the most…" He swallows, his eyes stray away for just a second—" _forthright_ of guys, but, uh… come on. I think there's a _little_ more to it than you're letting on."

My shoulders slouch a little, and I narrow my eyes. "I told you the important stuff."

"Oh, _that's_ not true, is it?" He tips his forehead a little closer, almost touching mine (this is dangerous, and I've leaned back as far as I can go, but that's not very far), and, very quietly, he says, "It's _Batman_ , Em. _Everything_ is important."

He lingers for a moment, searching my eyes, soaking up my discomfort, before abruptly leaning back some, giving me a bit of breathing room. "And— _and_ —in the park? You showed me that he _hugged youuu_ ," he reminds me, singing the last two words out like a playground bully, and I sharpen my glare towards him. _Shit_. I hadn't thought that through at the time. He slides a hand closer to my head, pinching a curl between forefinger and thumb, rubbing it along the elastic material of his gloves. "So what's—what's the deal, Em, hmm? How'd you two get all _up-close_ and _personal_?"

It takes a lot of self-control not to bat his hand away, but I'm helped by memory—I'd done that once before, at the off-campus diner, the second time we'd met, and he'd retaliated by grabbing a fistful of hair and pulling a gun on me. One curl is better than a handful. I can't resist, though, reaching up and grasping at his wrist to see if it might make his hand go still, and miracle of miracles, it does.

I look him in the eyes and say, "We met on the roof. He put his arms around me—and I put mine around him—so that he could get us down fast. That's it. We're not exactly on hugging terms."

He's staring intently at me as I tell him this, and once I finish, there's a beat of silence—then, suddenly, he grins, showing off and each and every stained tooth in his head, and then laughs, just a giggle at first, building into a wild cackle. It's extremely unsettling and more than a tiny bit infuriating (he's playing games), and despite knowing that it's best to just wait out the storm, I can't repress the instinct that just says _run_ , and I let go of his wrist and try ducking under the other in a bid for freedom.

He catches me by both shoulders before I can move more than a couple of inches and shoves me back against the bookshelf, hard enough that it makes my back ache where the bruise on my shoulder hits the shelves. I groan in pain, though through my tightly gritted teeth it sounds more like a snarl, and the Joker is back in my face before I can come up with a Plan B.

"You're trying to _lie_ about him—" the Joker gasps, still fighting off bubbly, screeching fits of giggles—"you're trying to keep his secrets—from me! _Me_! The guy who understands him better than… _anyone_! _No_ , Emma," he adds, slowly regaining control, and his hands tighten hard enough on my arms to make me flinch, "I can appreciate what you're trying to do here, but it's all for nothing. I'll figure out what you're hiding. One. Way. Or another."

I'm frustrated and angry after my thwarted escape attempt, and he's hurting me with his grip, so I do the ill-advised and make a dig at him. "You know, when you were putting together the whole clown act, it's a _real_ shame you didn't settle on _mime_."

It doesn't get the angry reaction I half-expected; he just narrows his eyes thoughtfully at me. "That's funny," he pronounces after a second. "But _I_ tell the jokes."

"Yeah, well, I guess _that's_ true," I say pointedly. "You understand _Batman_? Please. You two are _nothing_ alike." He listens to me attentively, and I know I'm playing with fire, but he hasn't lost his temper yet—just slides a hand up the side of my neck, splaying his fingers along my jaw, feeling it shift as I talk. Somewhere, I know that the fact that he's letting me go on is a bad sign, that I'm going to tell him too much, but now that I've started, I can't stop. "He cares. He helps. You? _You_? You just _break_ things—cities, systems, _people's lives_. That's what makes you powerful, sure, but it's also what makes you _worthless_."

He bows his head for a second and chuckles. "Oy," he says, then looks back up, bright-eyed. "Did he do a _number_ on you! One night with the Caped Crusader and you suddenly care about what's _right_? What's _good_? Oh, Emma." His other hand comes to join his first; he's cradling my face in both of them now, the gloves hot against my skin, as he gives me a profoundly pitying look. "You have _never_ cared about that."

To my utter mortification, I feel my eyes growing hot. I've been pretty good about not crying around the Joker lately, to the point where I haven't even really felt the impulse, but I guess last night with Batman re-opened the floodgates. I have to keep my voice low, a whisper, really, so that I don't break: "I did. I tried to. Before—"

"You're lying," he says deliberately, cutting me off, "you're lying, you are _ly_ -ing. You were _faking_ it. I just showed you that you didn't _have_ to."

I'm ready to argue the point. He didn't know me before, he still knows almost nothing about me before we crossed paths (because for him, there's nothing to know—that's the nature of his self-absorption, only willing to look at who I am as I relate to him: as far as he's concerned I don't _exist_ outside of him) and just because I've haven't really maintained a sense of rigid morality around him doesn't mean I don't care, have never cared about the damage he's done, but he goes on before I can get the words in order.

"Is that what Batman talked to you about? Good, evil, how you can earn a spot in _heaven_?"

"He didn't say anything about good and evil. He took me to a safe place, and as soon as he could, he left."

The Joker regards me with faint exasperation, and I see his jaw twitch, like he's reached a decision. His hands slip away from me, and then—

The right lower side of my face explodes with pain, and I'm suddenly turned sideways against the shelf, hunched over with my hand covering the spot he'd hit, instinctively protecting it from further damage.

Distantly, through the rush of blood in my ears, I hear the Joker speaking, sounding resigned. "Now, Em, you know this isn't usually my _preferred_ course of action with you, bu _t_ … you wanna play big girl games, I guess I gotta treat you like a big girl, hm?"

I don't answer him, instead pressing the back of my hand gently to my burning mouth. I already know from the feel of it that I'm bleeding from the corner, but I still want to see the smear of blood bright against my skin.

Another beat, and then he's leaning down beside me, his hands on his knees, like he's talking to a child or a dog. "That was just a friendly slap," he tells me earnestly. "Things could get _pret_ -ty messy. Between me and you?" He glances over his shoulder, across the room. "I've hated that couch since the second I saw it, and this seems like a prime opportunity to redecorate it with some nice sp- _latter_." He turns back to me and asks, "Say, you're not particularly attached to your fingernails, are you?"

It's all talk. Not because he wouldn't follow through with his threats—he _absolutely_ would—but because there's an inevitability to this. I'm going to tell him exactly what he wants to know no matter how much I'd like to keep it to myself, and probably sooner rather than later, because the information I have simply isn't worth whatever the Joker will subject me to in pursuit of it. I knew it from the beginning, but even so… one doesn't like to just hand the Joker everything he wants just because he snapped his fingers and said _now_.

On the positive side of things, I don't really feel like crying anymore. The pain's just made me angry again. I shake my hair back out of my face as I slowly straighten up and turn carefully towards him. He's watching me expectantly, with a glimmer in his eyes—he does love to win.

I start talking.

"Well—aside from making sure I didn't know where you were, or where Gordon was, Batman didn't push me. He seemed to feel sorry for me. He treated me with courtesy. Kindness." The Joker pulls mock-impressed faces; I ignore his input. "It made me feel guilty, like I was deceiving him somehow, so I told him. I told him that you and I fucked."

The Joker says, " _Tsk._ Please, Emma. _Made love_."

I stare at him, but that appears to be his punchline, and it's a shitty one, and I'm in no mood to crack a smile. "… _anyway_. He told me he didn't blame me for it, and that you'd been manipulating me. He told me it wasn't my fault."

He hums along as I talk, the sound rooted deep in his chest, and at my conclusion, he says, "And you, what do you think about _that_ , Em? Do you agree with his… as _sess_ ment?"

The question gives me a moment's pause, not because I don't know the answer, but because I don't know if he deserves the _truth_. It might be liberating, for a minute, anyway, to refuse to be fair-minded about this, to say _yes, you twisted me into this and it's entirely your fault_. In the end, though, I think the lie would be worse than the truth. At least in the truth of it, I have my say.

"No," I say, fixing my eyes on his. "I knew what I was doing. What I wanted. It's in Batman's nature to look out for people he thinks of as victims, but he missed the mark on this one."

The Joker, never one to leave well enough alone, leans in close again, his hair brushing my cheek. "Well," he muses, "he must have known a little more than he let _on_. He may _look_ dumb, but… he _did_ bug you."

"Yeah, well," I say, not liking the slight smugness I can hear in his tone. "It's _Batman_. He probably bugs _everybody_. I kind of doubt he was _expecting_ me to run back to you."

It's a lie, I'm pretty sure he picked up on the fact that I was unwilling to commit to staying put, but the Joker doesn't seem to question it. Instead, he points out, "But you _did_."

His gloating is really starting to get to me, and I'm still simmering after that slap, so I narrow my eyes at him and say, "Don't pull a muscle patting yourself on the back. I'm here for Gordon. If you didn't have _that_ held over my head, I'm pretty sure I would have taken Batman up on his offer to get me out of here and left you to _rot_."

It's a bit of an extrapolation—Batman had never said he _would_ help me escape the Joker, just that he _should_ have—but the rest of it is true, at least for the moment. Right now, I hate him a little bit, and even though I know it won't last, I'd gladly cut him out of my life here and now.

He seems to believe me, at any rate, though I'm not sure which part is responsible for the sudden distant look in his drifting eyes: my assertion that I don't give a shit about him, or the information that Batman was offering to help break his hold on me. He doesn't seem wounded, of course, just suddenly thoughtful, and _thoughtful_ makes me wary—he'll remember that there's more to glean from my time with Batman, maybe, or he'll come at me with some bizarre new accusation that I'm too flustered to refute. Either way, giving him time to collect his thoughts will likely be detrimental.

So I give in to another bad idea, something I've wanted to do since he slapped me, if not before. I ball my hand into a fist and, with as much force as I can muster (not much, given that my elbow is braced against a shelf and he's too close for me to work up a good swing, but effort counts for something), I punch him right in the stomach.

He's not expecting it, too caught up by whatever he's thinking about, so he fails to block, and my fist collides solidly with him. He releases the air in his lungs with a thick _oof_ , keeling over slightly and nearly whacking my forehead with his, and instead of pulling back (not like there's anywhere to run, anyway), I open my fist and flatten my palm against the velveteen material of his vest, feeling the spot I hit go tense under my hand.

Still hunched over, he stares at me through the messy strands of hair that have fallen over his eyes, and I can't tell if the look he's giving me is amusement or bloodthirst, but what's done is done, so I stand my ground and say, "And don't _fucking_ hit me."

If nothing else, he thinks _that's_ funny—or at least pretends to in an effort to make me let down my guard. He chuckles, sounding like I winded him a little, and straightens up, his hand covering mine, keeping me from pulling it back. "Ohh," he rasps, still catching his breath. "I'm _sorry_. Here, let me see—" and he crowds close to me, grasping my shoulder with his free hand and ducking to get a good look at the little split in my lip.

I catch my breath, certain he's going to use this nearness against me, that he's going to rip out my throat with his bare teeth, and I form the hand he's holding against his stomach into a claw, prepared to dig my fingertips hard into him in a likely-fruitless effort to make him _back off_ , but…

Instead of the expected pain, I'm shocked all to hell when I feel a touch of warmth and wetness, and I realize he's running the flat of his tongue across the bloodied corner of my mouth.

I should be totally repelled by him, but _should_ has never mattered before, and it doesn't now. The thrill of it goes straight to my knees, and I breathe in sharp through my nose as my free hand shoots up to grasp at his neck, trying to hold him still, though I'll be damned if I know whether I'm afraid that he'll move closer in or further away.

Taking his time, he swipes his tongue across the split one more time, the pressure and his saliva reawakening the pain, making it sting almost as much as it had to begin with. Then he moves back, undeterred by my grip on him, drawing up to his full height in front of me and settling into himself with a movement like a cobra's hypnotized sway. He's holding me in place with one hand on my shoulder, his other hand still pinning mine against him, and I'm not all that inclined to let go of his neck, either—he's looking at me like he wants to eat me alive, and I'm not sure the expression on my face is much more civil.

I lower my eyes to the scar on his mouth, the deep y-shape on his lower lip, and I'm sorely tempted to run my fingers over it, more so because I know there's a distinct possibility that I might lose one of them to his teeth in the process. I think he knows what I'm thinking, or at least suspects it, because he sucks in a breath and slides his hand up from my shoulder, trapping a spill of hair between his gloved palm and my neck and using his thumb to press the underside of my jaw, lifting my chin, and I make a little humming sound of complaint, refusing to move my eyes from the scar that's captured my attention.

The air is heavy, and this is about to shift into something dangerous, if it hasn't already, so naturally, someone knocks on the door.

I'm instantly alarmed, but the Joker doesn't seem worried so much as annoyed—his hand leaves my neck to brace against the shelf beside me as he drops his head a little, and I see him mouth a word that looks like "fuck."

My fear vanishes, for the most part, when someone speaks through the door: "Boss? You asked me to come back?"

The pressure of the Joker's hand against mine disappears abruptly; his vest shifts under my palm as he digs in the opposite pocket, and I glance down to see that he's produced an old-fashioned watch and is clicking it open. "He's early," he pronounces grimly.

"Well," I say, predictably divided between feeling disappointed and relieved, "no rest for the wicked, I guess."

He lifts his head to look at me again, and snorts. "Cute."

"Mm-hmm," I agree absent-mindedly, noticing that his tie has come halfway loose from his vest, probably when I punched him, and I lift my hands to tuck it back in place, smoothing the vest down over it.

"Boss?" comes the henchman's voice from behind the door, sounding a little more uncertain now.

The Joker makes a growling sound of annoyance and turns to bark "Just a _minute_ " over his shoulder. He looks back at me and slides his hand off of the shelf beside my shoulder, uncaging me. "Later," he says, in a tone that sounds like a promise.

"Mm," I say, a noncommittal sound—I'm still trying to shake off the thrall of the moment before this, and I don't believe it's a good idea to say too much at the moment.

The Joker nods, then, as quickly as a snake striking, he slaps himself brutally across the face—first with one hand, then just as hard and just as rapidly with the other. At this point, my reaction is limited to merely raising both eyebrows, startled but not necessarily _surprised_ , then he releases a breath that sounds like relief and strides away from me to let the henchman in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _skull emoji_
> 
> next up: more squabbling. a late-night encounter. Em gets her head screwed on a little straighter when she discovers something unpleasant. till then!


	8. Chapter 8

The Joker introduces the henchman he lets into the apartment as Wight, whom I recognize as the guy who grabbed me at the police station (it's not his face, obviously, it's his build, his sheer size: the man is _huge_ ). His job, the Joker says, is to babysit me while the Joker "runs an errand."

Predictably, given that I've spent the whole day with an endless rotation of the Joker's employees, I take issue with this.

"Just take me with you," I argue, arms combatively crossed, standing across the entryway from the coat rack where the Joker is suiting up. The unwelcome prospect of doing more fucking _waiting_ has roused me from my weird lustful haze, and I'm ready for a fight. Wight stands awkwardly at a slight distance, waiting on the final word on his involvement.

The Joker laughs at the demand. " _Oh_ , no," he says, adamant, taking a shoulder holster from the rack and yanking the gun out of it, checking the chamber and the magazine before returning it to the holster and shrugging it on. " _I_ know how this goes. It's all fun and games for you till I commit _one little murder_ —" He emphasizes his point by spinning and holding his index finger up for me to see, mouthing the word _one_ —"and _then_ come the waterworks. No. You're staying here."

"Here's an idea," I say, full to the brim with false brightness. "Why don't you _not murder anybody_? Then everyone's happy!"

" _I'm_ not happy!" he declares, pressing a flat hand to his chest.

"You've got Gordon hostage, Batman's in hiding, I'm here with you—who could you _possibly_ want to kill right now, anyway? A school bus full of children? The people working overtime at the soup kitchen?"

"Those suggestions aren't half-bad," he admits, the peach silk lining of his jacket catching the light as he slides it on. " _But_ ," he adds, reaching back to free his hair from the jacket's collar, "no time for that tonight, un-for-tun-ate- _ly_." As he reaches for his greatcoat, he catches a glimpse of my face, which I'm sure looks like I just bit into an entire lemon, and he pauses to crack a crooked smile. "Aw, Em, what's the matter—afraid I'm not coming _back_?"

"If you go out there tonight and die, Gordon's location dies with you."

"Oh, what a _tragedy_ ," he oozes, turning his back to me as he throws on his coat.

I growl low in frustration. " _God_ , I hate you."

"You know, saying that more _often_ won't make it any more _true_ ," he points out mildly, checking his pockets for knife after knife, making sure they're in place. "And _you_ don't really think I'm gonna die. _I'd_ venture to say you're not even all that bothered by the murder. You just don't want to be _bored_." He gives me a sudden knowing look, tutting reprovingly when I don't deny it. "That's very _selfish_ of you, Em."

"There's no rule that says I can't have multiple motivations for something," I answer, better able to keep him from getting under my skin with some distance between us and an audience looking on. "Can you at least tell me what you're going out to _do_?"

" _That…_ would ruin the surprise; now, are you gonna give this up or do I need to _hogtie_ you before I go?"

"Yeah, because that worked _so_ well last time," I shoot back.

Wight looks like he'd rather be buried alive than standing where he is. The Joker looks like he's trying not to smirk. He raises his gloved hands, palms out, like he's warding me off, and announces, with a certain finality: " _I'm_ going. _You're_ free to do whatever you want—but if you ever wanna see your pet commissioner again, you will _stay put_."

I huff. "Oh, sure. Break out the nuclear option."

"Sweetheart," the Joker says absently, already turning towards Wight, "that wasn't even _close_ to nuclear. _You_ ," he says, pointing at Wight, "keep an eye on _her_. Don't _touch_ her; if she wants to leave, let her. But don't otherwise let anyone else _fuck things up_. Good?"

"Good. I mean, yes, boss."

The Joker doesn't bother to look over at me again, possibly worried that I'll ensnare him in another argument (probably a wise decision—I don't exactly have any incentive to make sure his evening goes off as planned). He escapes the house, closing the door quietly behind him.

I exhale slowly, feeling the heightened tension I always feel around him leave me. After a moment, reassured that he's not going to suddenly pop back in on us, I turn to Wight and ask, "Is Wight your real name or a nickname?"

If he's surprised by the non-sequitur, he doesn't let on. "Nickname."

"W-I-G-H-T or W-H-I-T-E?"

"The first one."

"Huh." I fold my arms and look him over carefully. He looks about my age, Latino, and the sheer size of him should make me nervous, but maybe it's because the Joker told him specifically not to mess with me, or maybe it's because he just doesn't seem to put off the weird vibes that I usually get from the people with whom the Joker chooses to surround himself, but I'm not. "Seems like a weird nickname."

"Not really. Guy that gave it to me said I'm spooky. Like a wight."

I raise my eyebrows. "O-kay, fair enough. You think there's food in this place? I'm starving."

There _is_ food—a suspicious amount of it, actually, complete with milk and fruit and other perishable items, all still fresh. I ask Wight about the house and who it belongs to, but he just shrugs in response to my questions and suggests that maybe it's someone's cousin's. That doesn't sound right, given the guys that work for the Joker, but it's not like I have a better answer.

I cook a late supper, omelets and bacon and chopped honeydew, making plenty for Wight, which seems to surprise him, but he warms up just a tiny bit after that. He sits with me on the couch, and we eat and watch Adult Swim (his suggestion, and I go along with it, because I know otherwise I'll be glued to the news, waiting for clues that might tell me what the Joker's up to, and I don't think that's entirely healthy). When we're done, he obligingly scrubs the pans while I put used plates and cups into the empty dishwasher, and while he's turned towards the sink, I grab a little paring knife (small, but sharp) and tuck it away into my back pocket. Wight might seem reasonable, sane and uninterested in harming me, but I'm still not keen on passing the night totally defenseless. I've been wrong before.

"I'm going to bed, I think," I tell him after he finishes the dishes, glancing at the oven clock—it's near midnight by now, and I've been feeling dry-eyed and sore-necked for a while, clear signs that I need to sleep.

Wight nods. "Boss had us set up the back bedroom for you."

"Oh, great," I mutter, rolling my head backwards to stretch my neck and shoulders. "Wonder what _that_ means." Wight shrugs—not given to loquaciousness, this one, unlike his boss—and I say, "It was rhetorical, don't worry about it—good night, Wight."

"Night."

Examination of the bedroom reveals… nothing particularly damning. It's a little on the small side—not surprising in Gotham—and the wood-framed double bed is neatly made. There are more nails in the wall where pictures are missing. No bookshelves, no personal effects that I can spot right away. I check the closet, and find two things hanging up there—one large sleep shirt and one white party dress, both in my size. Under normal circumstances, I'd balk at letting the Joker pick out my clothes like I'm nothing but his life-sized doll, but I've been wearing my current clothes for over forty-eight hours now, and I'm starting to feel more than a little funky.

I push down the mutinous part of me that hates playing into his hands, even with something as simple as what I'm wearing, and I grab the sleep shirt and go to the connected bathroom.

There's makeup in the bathroom, toothbrushes, shampoo and conditioner and body wash and razors. I leave most of it alone, though I definitely make use of the various soaps, washing my hair and body under a viciously hot stream of water that goes a long way in making me feel comfortable again. I find the first aid kit and use it to change my bandages: my hand is healing up, but the cut is in such an inconvenient place that I just know it'll open up again if I don't keep it covered, while the bite mark on my neck is at peak lividity, so a bandage is necessary just to keep it hidden. I dry off, put on the sleep shirt, and make an effort to towel my hair dry, but the events of the day are really catching up to me now that I'm warm and clean, and in the end, I barely manage to remember to dig the knife out of my discarded pants and shove it under the pillow before switching off the light and climbing into the bed.

Sleep comes for me so quickly I feel like I'm falling, careening down into blackness.

I wake, suddenly, to someone putting their arms around me from behind.

I inhale sharply, doubtless betraying my wakefulness to whoever's in the bed with me. I don't have to struggle to remember where I am and what I'm doing; it comes to me immediately, and I shove my bandaged hand under my pillow, fingertips brushing the handle of the knife I brought to bed and grasping it tight.

With my other hand, I reach up, up to the place where I can feel a chin pressing into my shoulder. When my fingers make contact with the fleshy knobs of his scarred cheek, I'm—not relieved, not exactly, but this is certainly more familiar (and more welcome) ground than it would be if Wight or some random henchman newly on duty was here getting fresh with me.

Now that I know who I'm dealing with, I can pay attention to other things—like the fact that I think I can smell blood, salty and sharp and metallic, and I wonder if it's his or not. He's wound one arm underneath me—probably what woke me up—and that wrist bears down heavy on my breast, his hand splayed across my collarbone. The other arm crosses over my hip, and even as I register this, that hand grasps my thigh, his fingers curling neatly over the healing scratches he put there just a couple of days ago.

His chest is flush and heavy against my back, pressing me forward into the mattress. I feel airless, heady, and not entirely certain that this isn't a dream.

His chin in the crook of my neck shifts, and then he's speaking in my ear, his voice soft and low. "You know, it's funny that _Bat_ man thinks he's gonna _save_ you from this."

No, not a dream. He's hard and warm against the back of my thigh, and I'm about as awake as I can get, eyes open and staring at the blackness of the wall in front of me. His fingers twitch against my scratched skin, like he's dying to do more with them, the motion stirring up a raw little pain, but I squeeze my legs together tight, trapping his hand there—for now, at least, for as long as he's cooperating.

He laughs low in his throat, draws a breath, and, in a perfectly normal conversational tone, he says, "Like saving a junkie from the needle. I mean, I suppose it makes _sense_ , you could argue that you'd be better off—but come on, Em. Do you really _want_ to be saved?"

_Well, that's an excellent question._

I say nothing, but slowly, I relax my legs—and gasp a little too sharply as he slides his hand up and touches me, making him press his mouth to my shoulder and laugh quietly at my reaction as his fingers go to work.

There's something distinctly unkind about the sound of that laugh, which… big surprise, it's the Joker, but still. While I can still concentrate (it's coming and going in bursts), I loosen my grip on the knife, and reach under the pillow and grab the hilt with my other hand instead—much easier that way to bring it up and rest it against his neck. It's dark, so I'm careful, and the result is that he doesn't notice what I'm doing until the blade is right up against the base of his jaw.

He goes still for a second, then asks in the darkness, "Is that supposed to be a criticism?"

"Just—" I cut myself off with a gasp as he unexpectedly pushes a finger into me, then another, and I bear down a little on the blade: not drawing blood—I don't think—but close. He growls in response; I can feel the rumbling of his chest against my back.

I regain my focus, though he's resuming and redoubling his efforts to throw me off-track, and say, "Just making a point. If anything happens I don't want… I'll do something about it."

"A blade for a safe word," he laughs, and tightens the arm around my chest, crushing me close as he snarls into my ear, " _Ohhh_ —I love it."

His hand slips away from me, grasping my thigh again, pushing it _up_ and forward, then, with little warning, he pushes into me from behind and this is—not like before, when he ceded control to me. I have the knife, but it may as well be made of plastic for all the consideration he gives it. He holds me so tight I can hardly breathe and fucks me, hard and erratic, and it's _good_ , and it _hurts_ , and it's exactly what I've been trying so hard not to think about since the first time it happened.

Like this, I can feel him, every last bit of him.

He waits until I've started to adjust, till I'm moving more or less along with him, then, suddenly, the hand that was resting against my collarbone is now tight around my throat and I—

— _can't breathe_ , but I thumb the hilt of my knife, reassuring myself that I've still got a good grip on it, and I will stick it point first into his skin and push till I hit bone if he doesn't let go in time—

He sighs, quietly, and says, "Tell you what, though, Emma. Even if you _wanted_ to be saved… you're shit out of luck."

His thrusts are getting harder, quicker, and his hand tightens further, maybe bruising, and I'm starting to get dizzy. His teeth graze the shell of my ear; he sighs into it, and then, in an ugly voice, one that doesn't sound entirely human, he gnashes out, "Do you _really_ think he's got a _chance_ at taking you away from _me_?", and that shoves me _right_ over the edge, and

_oh_

_that's_

_**good.** _

By the time I can form a coherent thought again, his grip has loosened and he's shuddering against me as he comes. I draw a deep, gasping breath, and then realize, a few seconds too late, that I'm pressing too hard with the knife.

"Fuck," I say, the word sounding half-formed even to my own ears, and I lift the blade from his neck, tossing it away off the foot of the bed before reaching up to touch his neck where I've cut him, feeling the slickness of blood against my fingertips. "I'm sorry," I say, pressing my palm to the cut.

It takes a minute for him to respond, and when he does, he sounds comfortable, drowsy. "Don't be." Far from breaking away from me, rolling away to get comfortable, like a _normal_ person would, he maintains his grip on me, and in the weary warm state I'm in just now, I can't say I hate it—although I _do_ wonder how the arm stuck underneath me isn't _killing_ him. He's probably one of those weirdos who likes the numbness.

I lie there with him, my hand stopping the blood seeping from his neck, glad that I didn't hit anything vital even as I admit to myself that it would have solved a _lot_ of problems if I had. His breathing evens out fast; I'm pretty sure he's asleep, which doesn't come as much of a surprise, given our history, but it strikes me as such a _human_ thing to do—get off and pass out—that it makes me smile, albeit reluctantly, since I can't dodge the guilt I feel for not taking this all more seriously.

Then again, that's not a very accurate way of looking at it. Of _course_ I'm taking this seriously, or else I likely wouldn't be here. He's got Gordon, he's wreaking his usual brand of mayhem across the city, judging by the hints he dropped tonight, and odds are better than good that he's got something nasty planned for me and the end of all this. He's the enemy; I've never forgotten this.

But keeping him at arm's length, even when I still _wanted_ to, has never worked out well. Even if he _would_ respect that distance, I don't see much point in maintaining a persistent air of gloom, pretending I never enjoy his company, telling him and myself that I don't want him on some level and acting like it's not a lie. I'd certainly have the moral high ground, not that it matters much to him, and he likely wouldn't have as much fun with me if I showed him nothing but misery, but the act would be _exhausting_ , and he'd see through it anyway.

The truth of it is that I like more of him than I think the average person in Gotham would understand. I like that I occupy so much of his attention; I like the charged arguments that mark our interactions, even when he cuts too deep, even when they inevitably end in violence. I like the new experience of fucking him, the strangeness of knowing his body even as what's happening in his head remains a mystery to me. Probably more than anything, though, I like the addictive sense of urgency and focus that accompanies me everywhere after such prolonged exposure to him. Every day feels more vital now, more intense with the knowledge that at any moment, he might catch me up in his web.

All of those things pull me in. The guilt comes from my full awareness that they're dangerous and actively harmful to me, as well as to those who get caught in the crossfire of the games he plays with me. I can't do much more to protect innocent bystanders—I suspect that if I _did_ curl up and lock down and refuse to play along, he'd kill dozens more just to spite me—but I could do a better job of protecting _myself_. Sure, I'm functioning fine at the moment, but as I've learned time and time again, I can bullshit my way through a _lot_ , hiding things even from myself, when so much depends on it.

No—it's the _after_ that worries me. I know from painful experience that when the Joker finishes his latest game and vanishes from my life—provided I even _survive_ him this time—he'll leave it in ruins. He's done it before, he'll do it again, and I'm afraid that this time will be the worst yet. There are indicators that I haven't had the courage to examine closely, but that won't make them go away.

Puking after fucking him for the first time, for starters, with no hint of nausea before or after. I could blame it on the stress of the day, the shock of a dead girl's appearance in my house and Victor's attack on me finally catching up to me, but I know that's just a coward's excuse. That sickness was borne of my horror at myself for stepping over a line I never thought I'd cross, as well as deep fear of the unknown territory that lay behind the door I'd just opened.

I'd pulled it together immediately after that because I _had_ to, because my instincts were always pretty adept in a crisis and have only gotten better, but barely one full day later and I was bursting into tears because Batman had a kind word for me. I've never been particularly emotionally fragile, and that easy flood of tears is a bad sign. Something's cracked; there's a new instability deep down in me, and I'm afraid of what the consequences of that might be.

Bottom line: I should be protecting myself, shutting down, guarding against the Joker getting deeper under my skin, not opening myself up to him _more_. He'll take anything I give him, turn it around, and hurt me with it. I _know_ this.

It doesn't change a thing. Whether I'm shrinking into nothingness to keep him from being able to reach me or just cutting off pieces of myself and handing them over to him, in the end, I lose. At least this way, giving in to the powerful attraction to him, I can experience some semblance of happiness, as treacherous as I know it'll end up being.

"Your brain is _ticking_ ," the Joker hisses suddenly, startling the shit out of me. I'd been sure he was asleep, and he'd done nothing to make me think differently—he hadn't moved; his breathing hadn't changed.

"Sorry," I say reflexively, though his accusation makes no sense.

He yawns in the dark, shifts, and slides his arm out from under my ribs, though it doesn't go far—his ropey bicep comes to rest beneath my ear, and his arm curls around my forehead, hugging it close against his chest. It's not particularly comfortable, but before I can really voice a protest and start to wriggle away, he notes, "When this is all done, I'm gonna _eat_ it."

That stops me cold. After a beat, when he fails to elaborate, I say, "My… brain?"

He makes a soft, pleasantly affirmative sound; the tip of his nose brushes the skin behind my ear. "I get to _keep_ you that way."

Well. _That's_ ominous, and sparks more questions than it answers, and it's also exactly the kind of thing I'd expect from him. In his mind, I think there's a possibility it might even serve as a compliment.

So I don't point out how fucking weird he's being, just relax in his grip and mumble, "Yeah, well, do me a favor and hold off for a little while. I need it right now."

He laughs, but doesn't answer. Our idle talk lapses into silence, and I find myself drifting again despite the fact that I'm not used to sleeping with someone, and especially up close and personal like this. A few times, I jerk awake, warned by some deep instinct that it's not safe for me here, but each time, he's awake before I can break away, petting my hair and shushing my half-formed panic and, ultimately, lulling me back to sleep.

I wake up, and there's light behind the window blinds—warm, like it's at least late morning. I blink drowsily towards it for a minute before I realize that the Joker's grip on me has loosened in the night. The arm pillowing my head remains, but he's released my waist, and I turn to see that he's lying on his back beside me, presumably asleep, his free arm thrown over his face to block the light.

There's a bandage on his bare shoulder, and whatever wound it's covering, he didn't take care to make sure the bleeding had stopped before taping the bandage on—blood has soaked through almost to the edges, though by now it's the rusty brown of old, dried blood, and there's no sign of a fresher, brighter ring in the middle that would indicate he's still bleeding.

In the morning light, I can clearly see the shining pink web of scar tissue on his elbow, and I know there are more marking his body that I've never seen. This would be a decent opportunity to get a good look.

_Yeah, maybe if I was_ _ **really**_ _suicidal_. I shake my head, work my way out from beneath the blanket, and, holding my breath, I climb over him as carefully as I can. I half expect him to spring awake, to knock me over when I'm at my most precarious, but he remains still, allowing me to leave the bed (though I don't believe for a minute he's actually, truly asleep).

Once free, I go straight for the shower again—just a quick one this time, but obviously I need some washing up, and there's no telling when I'll get another opportunity. Once finished, I wrap myself up in a towel and, after swiping the mirror to get a quick look at myself (my hair is a fucking tempest, I should never have gone to bed with it damp, there are misshapen curls everywhere), I return to the bedroom.

He's awake now, his head pillowed on his arms instead of hidden in them, and he's staring at the ceiling, but he glances across the room at me as I emerge. He seems in no hurry to leave the bed—we slept for a good long time, I'd say, judging by the quality of the light, but I know he's got some reoccurring problems with sleep, so I'm disinclined to judge him for it.

I pull a face at him, then, purposefully, head to the closet and open it with an emphatic gesture at the only garment hanging within.

He raises both eyebrows, keeping his silence.

"You want me to wear this today?" I prod.

"Well, is there anything _else_?" he asks with a mock frown, as if he wasn't the one to set it all up.

I turn and look at the dress. It's not bad, as far as dresses go—fitted bodice with lace overlay, sturdy-looking straps, full skirt that looks like it'll fall about to my knee—but it's still a _dress_ , and I'm not entirely sure it'll be practical for whatever I'll be doing today.

Doubtfully, I say, "You don't think it looks a little… bridal?"

"Now _there's_ an idea. You wanna get married?"

I snort, shooting him a withering look. "Do you even _have_ a birth certificate?"

"Why do you ask?" he replies casually, sitting up a little, propping himself on his elbows, and it's hard not to notice the covers falling away from his chest, particularly when I spot yet another badly bloodied bandage taped across his ribs.

"You need some proof that you exist to get… a marriage license," I say distractedly, eyeing the bandage, and immediately follow up with, "What _happened_ to you last night?"

He seems baffled by the question, though I suspect it's an act, and he appears to need to look at his own bandages before he figures out what I'm talking about. "Oh, the—? Couple of guys got some lucky hits in. Occupational hazard," he says dismissively. "You're not answering the question."

I roll my eyes and grab the dress hanger. "The answer is _absolutely not_ , I was just trying to let you down easy."

He lays a hand over his heart, looking wounded, but his eyes betray his amusement. I roll my eyes and turn my back, pulling the dress on over the towel before yanking the towel out from underneath. It's not that I feel particularly modest or shy around him, especially not now—but blatantly stripping down in front of the Joker feels like handing him a weapon, and I'm trying to be careful about doing that as much as I can. He laughs at me anyway, but reserves comment.

Once dressed, I turn again and spread my hands, inviting his appraisal. "Well?" I ask, a little bit of bite to my tone, given I'm still not particularly happy about this. "How do I look?"

He grins. "Pretty as a picture."

"Perfect." I drop my hands to my sides abruptly. "I'm wearing my own boots with it, though, I don't care if you somehow procured some cute little matching slippers that'll rip to shreds after five minutes in the Narrows."

He drops his head back to the pillow and speaks to the ceiling. "Oh, Emma, what do you take me for? I am _nothing_ if not _practical_."

That's such a line of bullshit that I can't really do anything about it but turn and leave the room in search of the aforementioned boots, aware that he may well have gotten rid of them for his own reasons while I slept.

He did nothing of the kind—I find them in the entryway, right where I left them, and I sit and put them on immediately, drawing the laces tight. I'm sure with the combination of boots and dress I look like GI Barbie, but it's preferable to being stuck wandering the streets of Gotham barefooted again. It's a miracle I didn't get tetanus last Christmas.

It's not till the boots are securely on my feet and I can hear the shower running again from the bedroom that I notice something: there's no sign of Wight, or any of the other henchmen. If it wasn't obvious enough last night, when the Joker left explicit orders that Wight should let me leave if I wanted to go, it's clear now: I'm not under lock and key, because this time, I wasn't kidnapped, but came to him of my own free will. I could bail on this whole thing right now if I wanted to. Of course, I'm sure the Joker would have _some_ kind of opinion about it if I actually did, and likely wouldn't let me get very far in the end, but still—it's nice to be able to move around without eyes tracking my every move.

I don't want to leave. I do, however, want breakfast, so I head into the kitchen and start getting things together.

Before long, I start to pick up on the smell.

At first, I think it's some bad meat, or rotten fruit, or something growing fungus in the back of the fridge, but after a thoroughly efficient search and after noticing that the smell gets a little worse every time I step away from the wall with the refrigerator and the sink, I have to conclude that it isn't coming from any food.

It was wishful thinking, anyway, I know.

There's a little nook on the far end of the kitchen that I hadn't seen reason to investigate last night, an alcove with two doorways in it. The left-hand side leads to a large, well-stocked pantry, and not a trace of that sickly-sweet odor gusts out to greet me when I open the door.

I turn to the right-hand side. I know what I'm about to discover, I'd have to be naive or a fool not to have suspected it in some measure as soon as I came into this house, and I know I should just walk away, but… I can't just leave and never know for sure.

I open the door.

The smell is strong now, and if I was in any denial before, it's gone now—it's the same smell that came off of that girl Victor had brought to the house just a couple of days ago. Bethany, Detective March had called her. The light from the kitchen falls on a staircase, leading down into a dark basement. I scrabble at the wall, find the light switch, and flip it.

They're down there, two people who I presume were the owners of the house, sprawled atop a pile of clothing and broken glass and splintered wood frames. I can't see much of the man, just his bloodied head and shoulders; I'd have to go further downstairs to see the rest of him, but the woman is in full view, curled up a little, still dressed up in elegant work clothes. I don't see any blood on her, but the gray pallor of her skin is unmistakable even from a distance. Her body is small, and she wasn't much older than I am.

A sudden warmth at my back serves as a split-second warning before the Joker speaks directly into my ear: " _Well_ , we needed a place in a pinch, and Max 'n Carly there drew the short straw."

I jump at his voice, and, suddenly hyper-aware that we're both at the top of a tall flight of stairs and that Max at least looks like he died from some kind of blunt-force trauma, possibly hitting his head in a fall, I try to move, but the Joker's arms brace hard against the doorframe beside me, blocking my way back. Whatever sixth sense he sold his soul for must have alerted him to the fact that I was snooping around; he's clearly come fresh from the shower, only half-dressed, and his bare chest is warm against the exposed skin of my shoulders as I press back against him, gripping the doorframe beneath his hands.

My survival instinct, however irrational, tells me to get away from him before he can shove me down the stairs as well, but there's a louder voice clamoring for attention and I'm talking before I can think better of it: "They were just at home. It didn't have to be this place—this was… _so_ unnecessary—"

"Think I should have targeted a couple who'd gone out instead?" he muses, leaning forward over my shoulder so he can peer down at the scene below. "Maybe whoever took the A-Train last night? Put names on a wheel and thrown a dart? I'll give it to you, a good old-fashioned home invasion _is_ a little straightforward." Unbearably casual, like he just asked me where I wanted to go for breakfast, he turns his head a little, buries his nose in my hair at the crown of my head, and breathes in deep.

I swallow hard, finding that my mouth is suddenly parched. By all rights, this shouldn't be bothering me as much as it is. I know he kills people as naturally as breathing, it's part of his deal, he's done it in front of me since the day I met him. It seems foolish and shallow to attribute my shock to the fact that he just hasn't killed _around me_ in a little while, though it's partially true—I haven't had to bear witness to his hobby in all its grotesquery in quite some time, Lucille Rossi's disembodied hand notwithstanding, and it lulls one into a sense of complacency.

No. The biggest problem is that I think I might be at the _very_ least indirectly responsible for this one.

In a voice that I can't seem to lift much past a whisper, I say, "Did you pick them because she and I are the same size?"

The Joker doesn't say anything for a moment. He leans back a little, and I can feel the weight of his stare burning into the side of my face, but I don't look at him, too busy gazing at the dead woman. Finally, flippantly, he says, "Don't ask questions you don't _really_ want the answers to, Em." He pauses, then corrects himself. "Wait. No. Don't ask questions you _already_ know the answers to. Yeah," he finishes, sounding decisive.

_Killed for her house and a change of clothes. His other victims should be so lucky._

The Joker covers my hands with his to dislodge my grip on the door frame, then lets them go, reaches past me, and yanks the door shut in my face. "What're you, gonna go _fainting_ on me now?" he taunts, and grasps my shoulders, turning me to face him—I don't resist him, which I imagine is the reason for the slight frown I see when I look up at his face. "Come on. Three days ago I had a _human hand_ on your coffee table. _This_?" He pulls a thoroughly unimpressed face as he motions with his head to the closed door, the basement beyond. "Child's play."

_Sure, but it's nice to have a reminder of exactly what you are every time I'm starting to forget._

I don't speak the thought out loud, but he much catch some trace of it in my stare—he ducks his head, examining me, and he makes a low, rumbling sound. " _Mmmm_ —come on, Emma," he mutters, looking closely at one eye at a time. "If you're gonna throw a _fit_ , might as well go on and get it out. What're you thinking, hmm?"

I tell him the truth. "Right at this very second? Hinterkaifeck."

His brows furrow in cartoonish confusion. "Ges…undheit?"

It's a line that would've made me laugh last night, but with that sweet sickly stench burning in my nose, I'm suddenly not really feeling humor.

"Do you know about Hinterkaifeck?"

He stares, and I can see in his eyes the exact moment he decides to indulge me. He lets go of my shoulders, straightens up, and folds his arms across his chest. The bloodied bandages have been exchanged for fresh, clean, white ones, a little sloppy but secure. "Tell me."

"It was the name of a family farm in Germany, around nineteen-twenty. One day, neighbors drop by to visit and find the whole family dead. The father had mentioned to neighbors that he'd found footprints in the snow leading up to the house, had heard footsteps in the attic, but they never found anyone. Then, a day or two later, someone killed every last one of them with a pickaxe. The young granddaughter survived for a few hours after she was hit, long enough to rip out her own hair as she lay dying next to her murdered mother and grandparents. Whoever did it lit their fire, ate their food, and fed their animals for several days before moving on, leaving the family's money and valuables untouched. So I was thinking about Hinterkaifeck."

There's a heavy silence that drags out for five or ten seconds before he asks, very deliberately, "And… _why_ were you thinking about Hinterkaifeck?"

_Because I have the same sick feeling in my stomach now as when I first learned about it years ago_ —but I don't tell him that, settling instead for the part of the truth that's less about me. "Because they never found the murderer, and for some reason… it just occurred to me that it could have easily just been you."

Something lights his eyes then, a dreadful sort of knowing, scaly and bright, and for the first time in a long time I find his stare absolutely unbearable. I drop my eyes and pull away from him, but before I can escape, he catches my chin with his pinching fingers and draws it up so I either have to look at him or make it obvious that I'm afraid to. I choose the former, struck by the sudden impression that if I cower away it'll be the last thing I do.

He looks at me, greedy, devouring the repulsion and terror, and in the end, he just says, in a tone that's falsely bright, "That's ridiculous, Em. In nineteen twenty-two? I wasn't even _born_ yet."

Then he drops my chin and moves away from me, passing back through the kitchen. "Don't wander," he says over his shoulder as he makes his way back to the bedroom. "We're dropping in on old Jim next."

I watch him until he carelessly hurls the door shut behind him, and then, slowly, I leave the basement and its horrors behind, walking automatically to the living room and taking a seat on the edge of the couch.

This is why I'm an idiot for ever developing an attachment of any sort to him. This is why I should stop indulging it, no matter what I get out of it.

He's nothing but a monster walking around in human skin, and I'm a fool for ever letting myself forget it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know that emoji that is just bearing its teeth in more of a grimace than a smile? It's not supported here but you'll just have to take my word for it. That's kind of how I feel about this whole chapter. I mean, it's one of my favorites, and has some of my favorite moments and exchanges in it, but... _yeesh._
> 
> Emma's a history major, and that rarely comes up, but she knows some stuff sometimes. Also I haven't really been pointing out the ways that memes have made their way into this story but there was literally a Lenny Pepperbottom reference in this chapter. Terrible and also bad.
> 
> Next: even more arguing, the Joker gets melodramatic (imagine that), and we check back in on Gordon. Nine chapters in, the game _finally_ starts. See you then!


	9. Chapter 9

By the time the Joker is dressed and ready to go, I've talked myself into some semblance of functionality. The reminder that we're heading Gordon's way helps: I wasn't present for the murder of the homeowners, and likely couldn't prevent it even if I _had_ been, but I've still got a shot at helping him. Sure, wearing the clothes of a woman whose death I feel at least partially responsible for is _definitely_ going to fuck me up in a major way down the line, but _now_ is not the time to fall apart over it.

Not that I could reason away a breakdown if one has really decided to settle in, but for now, it appears that my mind is still taking orders—the dread in the pit of my stomach hasn't gone anywhere, but I feel calmer, basically under control. The Joker stands in the doorway, dressed to the nines and eyeing me a tad judgmentally as he pulls on his gloves. "You done?" he asks brusquely.

I give him the blankest look I can muster. "Done with…?"

The Joker doesn't say anything in response to that, just tilts his head to one side and gives me a knowing, nasty little smile, and my fingers itch so badly to scratch it right off his face that I have to ball my hands into tight fists and hide them in my skirt so he won't see.

The little moment of tension doesn't last long. He finishes up with his gloves, then lifts his hand, cocks his wrist and points at the door, and, as if on cue, a car horn beeps softly, twice. I have to work to keep from rolling my eyes at the showiness of it all. I stand abruptly, plenty eager to leave this place behind, and say, "I guess that's our ride?" Without waiting for an answer, I move past him towards the door.

He follows, radiating complacency.

A windowless van idles outside, and since the Joker isn't offering any instructions or guidance, I slide the side door open and peer suspiciously at the two men in the front seat. I don't recognize the driver, but the passenger leans around the seat to look at me, and I nod. "Sup, Wight?"

"Emma," he greets me, then his expression goes suddenly guarded, coinciding with the presence I feel arriving behind me, and he ducks back out of sight.

The Joker speaks, his mouth too close to my ear. "Are you uh… gonna climb in, or you wanna spend the whole day talking to the help?"

I lean away to put some distance between our faces, shoot him an ugly look, then climb in without a word. The back is seatless and more or less empty, aside from a few suspiciously heavy duty crates lining either edge. The crates could serve as seating, but honestly, I don't trust that they aren't full of guns, and I don't want a bullet in the ass when one misfires after the van hits one of Gotham City's numerous potholes, so I opt to kneel on the floor on the back instead of risking it. In the process of smoothing my skirt down over my legs so I'm not flashing the whole world, I realize the dress has _pockets_ , of all things, which I don't need at the moment, but I file the information away for later. Could be I'll find a knife or something and can hide it away until the right moment.

The Joker has no such reservations about the crates, making himself comfortable on the one nearest me after directing the driver to "take it easy." His purple-clad thigh is close enough for me to lean against it if I wanted to; I sit with my spine rigid, staring at the wall as he settles in and the van takes off.

Of course, the Joker's never one to allow himself to be ignored, even—as one might hope—when the circumstances are less than ideal and far from private. After a couple of miles, during which I've managed to more or less zone out and ignore my surroundings, he claps his hands to his knees, startling me.

" _So_ ," he says deliberately. "You're just… never gonna talk to me again, hmm?"

I blink at him for a second, then glance furtively towards the front. This isn't a discussion I'd thought he'd want to have in front of his guys, especially with that opener—sounds a little too domestic; he has his whole persona to maintain and all—but they face stoically forward.

I turn my gaze back to the Joker, but my time to respond is up, apparently. He flicks the tip of his tongue at the corner of his painted mouth and adds, "I mean, by _now_ , I would've thought you understood: killing is _always_ on the table. If you're still getting mad about that after all this time… well. I guess _someone's_ gotta be the slow learner."

I direct my eyes towards the opposite wall again, unable to look at him for much longer. " _Obviously_ I know you're gonna kill people."

There's a short pause, and then, pointedly, he asks, "So, what's the problem?"

"The problem is I'm still opposed to it. _Knowing_ something's true doesn't equate endorsement of that thing, so yeah, ex _cuse_ me, but I'm gonna be pissed about it."

He sighs, long and labored. "Always with the savior complex," he mutters, and out of the corner of my eye, I see him slouch back against the van wall. "You know, I gotta say, it shows up at the most inconvenien _t_ times."

I turn to glare at him. "It _never left_." His eyebrows shoot up, _oh really?_ and when my brain jumps in to remind me of a particular incident, I amend the statement. "Well, I wasn't super concerned about Falcone's guys that one time they showed up to try and kill us last Christmas."

"Not concerned, I'll say, you _shot_ several of them," he says, pronouncing the words quickly and with obvious relish at the memory.

"Killers don't get a whole lot of my sympathy. Besides that, I'd argue that every time I _could_ care about someone you murdered, I did."

He makes a clicking sound with his tongue, and his top lip flashes away from his teeth for a moment as he grimaces. "I didn't see you shedding tears over Lucille Rossi."

"I didn't say anything about _tears_. I'll remind you that I tried to get out as soon as you told me what the two of you did to her."

" _S_ aving your own _s_ kin," he says smugly.

"Partially. Part of it was that I just didn't want to carry the weight of another one of your victims."

"Oh, Emma," he says with cartoonish disapproval. "That's a selfish line of thought. What about _them_?"

"They're _dead_ ," I say, the volume of my voice inching just past acceptable—though the henchmen driving us might as well be blind and deaf to the argument happening behind them. "It's too _late_ for me to help them. The _only_ thing that's left, was far as we're concerned, is how I react to what you've done, and maybe it's self-serving, but personally I think they'd all be pretty glad to see that I'm pissed off at you because of what you _did_ to them."

He's growling by now, his teasing turned into real irritation. "Death isn't what everyone thinks it is, you know," he says, swaying on his seat as the van traverses the broken city streets, turning his head to check out the road in front of us.

Since he's not looking at me, I stare at his face, the dramatic cutoff where his jaw joins his neck and white paint, fresh and not yet dirtied from the messes he makes, gives way to healthy flesh. "What," I say sarcastically, "it's _not_ the end of our existence on this plane?"

"Death isn't the _negative experience_ everyone thinks it is," he amends his statement seamlessly. After a minute, he turns to see how I've responded to this, and, presumably seeing the confusion on my face, he widens his eyes demonstratively and says, "Here. I'll _show_ you."

His arm is moving before I even register it; by the time I do, he's yanked his gun from the holster at his ribs. I flinch away immediately, sure he's going to shoot Wight, or worse, the driver, but he surprises me, reaching across and grabbing my free hand. Yanking it close to him, he slaps the gun into it, and then, his hand folded around mine, making me hold the hilt tight, he ducks and positions his forehead in front of the barrel.

I freeze.

The Joker's eyes are trailed on me beneath the gun barrel, attentive and bright.

I try to release the gun, but his hand is pinning it to mine, and in the next second his free hand has come up to reinforce his grip. I dare to break my gaze long enough to try and get a look at the weapon, thinking maybe it's a fake, maybe it's not loaded, but even though I've trained more with firearms over the last few months, I'm no expert, and it looks real to me. It certainly feels real.

I meet the Joker's eyes again, and, assured that I'm all caught up, he starts speaking immediately. "Oh, go ahead," he encourages me. "Pull the trigger. I'll prove it to you. Death is, uh… death is _nothing_."

I feel a sudden flash of rage, furious at him for being so flippant about this—furious that he's so glibly putting me in this position. His hands are mostly pressed to the back of my hand and its heel, leaving my fingers with some wiggle room; I move my index finger inside the trigger guard.

His eyes drop to follow the movement, and as I rest my finger, lightly, on the trigger, he hums in approval and meets my gaze again.

My breath is coming fast now, though it brings no relief to the tightness in my chest. "How can you say that?" I demand, very quietly now. "You're here. I pull the trigger, and you're not here anymore. _How_ is that nothing?"

His shoulders rise a half inch, then fall back into place. "So a few synapses quit firing. Do you know how small, how _infinitesimal_ that is on a universal scale? It is… _such_ a tiny fraction of a single percent of the _things_ that are happenin-g. It doesn't rate."

"I don't give a shit about the universe; _I'm_ not the universe," I say rapidly. " _Universal scale_? What are you _talking_ about? I'm here, right? You and I, we are both… zoomed _way_ the fuck in, and _this_ is our world, and what happens in it? It matters! It's all we have, and it _matters_." I can feel the quiver in my hand, know that it would be shaking now if not for his, enfolding it, which remain steady.

He breathes a tiny sigh—exasperated, I think, that I'm completely unwilling to tune in to Channel Bullshit. "All right," he says under his breath, " _fine_ —" and he leans forward and presses his head to the barrel. "So it matters, huh? Then _do_ something that matters. You want to keep people from dying? You hate seeing me kill 'em? Then pull the trigger. _Save_ them."

I open my mouth—and can't think of anything to say.

"Come on, come onnnnnnn," he's muttering, egging me on, "Do it, _do it_ _doit_ ," but I can't move.

Of course I know I should do it. I know him better than most, maybe better than anyone, I have _seen_ him kill people before with my own eyes; I of all people am qualified to be judge and executioner and feel extremely justified in the act. It's not even that I have an issue with killing in general: I killed his henchmen in the past when they put me in danger, and I have never felt even a tiny twinge of regret over it how it played out. I have a rare opportunity here, and if I could just follow through, I will, without a doubt, be saving dozens, hundreds, possibly thousands of people from the blight he spreads.

_But…_

But I've forgotten what it's like, not living with the awareness that he could pop up in my life again at any time. When I look back at my life before our first meeting, it's hard to separate one year from another—they blend sleepily together, uneventful, average. Conversely, the two and half years since I met him blaze vivid in my mind, technicolor, distinct. The bond he forged between us electrified me, and killing him? That means slipping back into the meaninglessness of my previous existence.

 _Yeah, so this is a problem_. It's understandable, not trying to kill him when I'm at my usual thorough disadvantage, but _now_ , when he's thrown the opportunity in my lap? There shouldn't even be a question in my mind. It should be the most natural thing in the world to sacrifice the things that I want so I can safeguard the lives of countless people he'll take otherwise.

But, as he's fond of pointing out, selfishness is my constant companion. For the first time in a long time, I feel nothing but deep loathing for myself, but the idea of pulling the trigger right now seems more impossible to me than it would be if the gun were at my own head. I hate him _so much_ , but I —

—love him a little, too. I feel gutted and sick at the very thought of killing him, because despite what he says, it _would_ matter. If only to me.

The Joker is smiling. There's a manic shine to his eyes.

"You can't," he says with unrestrained glee. "For all your talk about hating death, you can't do the one thing that is _guaranteed_ to save lives. Might wanna re-examine your stance, there, Em."

My lip hitches in contempt, and nastily, trying to hide the fact that I feel like he just stabbed me in the guts, I say, "How many chances has Batman had to kill you and chosen not to? How many times have you given him this same exact lecture?"

"Well," the Joker says, eyes rolling up into their corners meditatively, " _us_ -ually he's trying to remove my face with his fists before I really get the opportunity."

His finger suddenly taps mine, which is still resting on the trigger, and I strangle a shriek of alarm before it can really escape. "Don't _do_ that!" I snap, and yank my finger free of the trigger guard.

He laughs softly through his nose and moves one hand to grab the gun by its barrel, then loosens the other, and I'm finally able to yank my hand away while he steadies his grip on the gun. Immediately, I fold both my arms over my stomach and lean slightly forward over them, hands tucked in tight so he can't grab one and pull this shit again.

The Joker says, "Well. For what it's worth—whether it _matters_ or _not_ —it's nice to know that you couldn't go through with it. Again." He aims the gun at the side of the van and pulls the trigger.

A little plastic rod pops out, and a flag unfurls, the word _BANG!_ printed on it.

I stare at the flag, then slowly, slowly drag my eyes to his. He looks so pleased with himself I have to work hard to keep from sitting up and hitting him in his stupid face. Instead, I say, "There's always next time."

Hollow words, and he knows it, but he flashes me a grin anyway. "And I _always_ look forward to it," he assures me, then clicks the flag back in place and puts the toy gun back in its holster.

I think I'm justified in moving a little further away at that point, closer to the back door, and he must have gotten whatever attention he was hunting for, because he leaves me alone. I'm feeling more than a little freaked out by what just transpired and the revelations that accompanied it—this isn't the first time I've had a chance to kill him and let it slip by, but it seems the most damning—so, true to nature, I refuse to think about it. Every time my panicked mind tries to review the choice I just made, I drag it away, force it to refocus on what I'm doing here. I'm willing to bet I won't have to do it for long. Time with him has a tendency of forcing me out of my head sooner or later.

Some time passes—more than a half hour, less than an hour, and then the van rolls to a stop, and as Wight hops out, the driver says, "Here, Boss."

"Thank you, Gumby," the Joker says idly, rising to the back-bent crouch necessitated by the limited space of the van's interior. Wight opens the side door, the Joker hops out, and I follow.

We're in a narrow alley, parked right next the external basement access of a tall, ugly brick building. My heart starts thumping right away as the Joker unlocks a gate barring the staircase from the public, and I look around quickly for civilians, cameras that might be catching this—but the van is parked at an angle, protecting us from the view of passersby on either side of the alley, and this is obviously the part of town where CCTV is a luxury most can't afford.

 _This is where he's keeping Gordon._ I turn wide-eyed to the Joker—he's paused to watch me take it in, and when my eyes fall on him again, he winks and shoves the gate open. "Pick up your feet, Em," he says on his way down the steps.

He doesn't have to tell me twice. Closing the distance between us with a few quick steps, I stick to him tight as a burr. Wight and the driver stay behind.

He leads me through a loud, fairly dungeon-y basement full of supplies and machinery. It seems to take a longer time than I think it should, and I'm starting to get the creeping fear that this is a setup of some kind, a trap, but then we round a corner and I see armed guards posted at a door, and I breathe easier again.

The guards move to unlock the door as we approach, and if they're surprised to see me, they make no indication of it. The Joker yanks the heavy door open, braces against it, and makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. _After you_.

I proceed with some caution—I'm mostly sure it's all right, but it's never a great idea to take the things the Joker tells you at face value. As I step through the door, though, my concern that I'm walking into a trap fades, replaced in a rush by another fear.

I see Commissioner Gordon. He's sitting upright on the floor in the corner opposite the door, eyes closed, a state which doesn't change at the sound of the door opening. His skin still has that alarmingly gray cast that it did in the Joker's video.

"Gordon," I whisper without really meaning to, and I go to him.

The door opening may not have woken him, but the sound of my boots drawing nearer does—he jerks awake with a start, looking around with suddenly wide eyes, like he's searching for an attacker. I halt a foot or so away from him, holding my hands up to signal I mean no harm as his eyes fall on me. He still doesn't have his glasses, and I don't know how bad his vision is without them, but he seems to recognize something—the halo of hair, maybe—because he relaxes, just a little bit.

Somewhat inappropriately, I feel myself smiling as I close the distance between us and drop to a knee beside him. It's not exactly proper, given the circumstances, but I'm so relieved to see him finally, _finally_ , to confirm for myself that he's still alive, that I can't help myself. Before I can really consider whether opening with a joke is in bad taste, I crack, "Hi. Looks like you would've benefited a _little_ bit more from witness protection than I did."

For a cop, Gordon has a decent sense of humor. He laughs weakly, though it quickly turns into a cough. "Oh, god, I'm sorry," I say, immediately regretting the decision, and I put my hand on his shoulder, gentle, aware that he's probably got a host of injuries that I can't see beneath his clothes. "Take it easy."

As soon as he can speak, he says, "I'd hoped you'd find… some way to stay out of this." His voice, which already tends towards softness, is fainter than usual, and he has to draw breath mid-sentence.

I paste on a weak smile as I start looking him over, trying to figure out where and how he's hurt. "Well, I attract trouble, you know that. Couldn't let you have all the fun, anyway."

The ugly head wound I saw in the video has stopped bleeding, but it still worries me for its potential to prove dangerous in the long run. The left side of his face looks battered and his left eye is swollen shut. His lips are cracked and dry, and I turn to look at the Joker, trying hard not to glare. "Do you have water?"

The question comes out a bit more accusatory than I meant for it to, but the Joker doesn't seem to register my tone. He purses his lips, brooding over it, then, with a twitch of his eyebrows and a shrug of his shoulders, he turns to go back through the door.

Gordon doesn't have his glasses, but his vision must be good enough to make out the Joker's shape, to recognize that he's leaving, because he grabs my arm hard, urgently. I turn to blink at him, a little surprised at his sudden grip, and softly, he says, "Emma, you have to get away from him."

I frown and shake my head. "That's… easier said than done, Commissioner."

He gives me a small, emphatic shake. "Find a way. He's _going_ to hurt you."

I reach up and cover his hand with mine. Well aware that my next words could sound pathetic if I'm not careful, I make sure there's nothing wounded or soft in my voice, just stating a fact when I tell him, "He always hurts me."

He looks at me like he doesn't quite know what to say to that. I move past the subject quickly. "Everyone's looking for you," I tell him, in a hushed voice. "The whole city. Batman."

He doesn't seem surprised at this, nor does the news make him appear particularly hopeful, so I grasp his hand a little tighter and add, "And the Joker… he told me he's giving me a chance to help you. I know he's shitty, he's deceitful, but he doesn't outright _lie_ —not about things like this. So I think I'm here to help."

"Emma," Gordon says, "he's not going to—"

Loudly, the Joker clears his throat. I turn to see that he's standing in the doorway again, a bottle of water in hand, and as my eyes fall on him he tosses it across the room to me. I catch it hard against my chest, and narrow my eyes suspiciously, convinced all at once by how easily he's giving it to me that he's done something to it—but the seal is unbroken, there are no holes. It's warm, but looks intact. "Thanks," I say warily, then turn again, opening it and handing it over to Gordon.

He's in want enough of water that he doesn't take the time to be suspicious, and he drinks it down. I settle down on both knees, and as I watch over him, I notice that he's only wearing one shoe.

At first I think that maybe he lost it in a scuffle, during the kidnapping, maybe, but a quick check reveals that the missing shoe is on the floor next to him, sock stuffed into it. I glance at Gordon's foot and notice that something looks… wrong.

"Don't—" he begins as I reach for it, but I've caught the cuff of his pants and am pushing it up before he can do anything about it.

His leg is fucked.

It's not a compound fracture—not quite—but it looks hideous regardless. The ankle is swollen and misshapen enough that there's no way it's just a sprain, and the skin around it is a shade of purple that's alarming even to _me_. If I had to venture a guess about what happened, I'd say someone stomped on it with vicious force.

It's not particularly hard to guess who.

I look at the Joker, who's stuck his head out the door to speak to the guards, and I say, "Why is his ankle broken?"

The Joker, after a second, pulls his head back into the room and furrows his brow at me. "What's that, turtledove?"

I'm not in the mood. "Why is his _ankle_ broken?"

The Joker, if anything, looks more deeply confused. "Well—I wanted to unchain him from the boiler, and he needed to be immobile before I could _do_ that," he explains, sounding uncertain as to why I don't automatically understand the logic.

"Just… leave it," Gordon mutters in an aside to me.

I know I should respect his request, that he's the one with the most to lose here, but I'm so mad it's hard to really think clearly and hold my tongue. I do turn a little, blocking him from the Joker's view with my body as best I can as the words spew from me: "Even for _you_ , this is bad. No bed, no water, no bathroom—"

"We _let_ him have a _bucket_ ," says the Joker, with a sort of henpecked defensiveness that I know is his idea of a joke.

"—and now the broken ankle for, what is it, going on a _day_ with no medical treatment? That's the kind of thing that gets cut off if you leave it long enough."

"Fingers crossed," he says under his breath.

"Whatever your plan is," I snap before I can talk myself down from the slow burn of rage that's been building for most of the day now, "you better accelerate it, because I'm getting to a point where I'm ready to throw any wrench I can in it just to watch it fail."

The Joker purses his lips thoughtfully for a moment, then draws breath to say something, but right then, a henchman comes through the door behind him and he exhales dramatically, holds up a finger— _one second_ —and turns to confer with his employee. "Excellent," he says emphatically after a moment, and turns back to me. One hand is now conspicuously behind his back.

"Fortunately, Em, things will be working out as you hoped," he announces, prowling towards us. I get to my feet immediately, suspicious of his sudden geniality.

"What do you have in your hand?" I demand, hands going nervously to my hips.

He pulls another cartoonishly confused face and waves his empty hand in front of himself. "Uh— _nothing_ , Em."

"The one behind your back. Stop moving."

He obeys—for a second, scrunching up his nose in feigned regret. "I _would_ , but, uh-—y'know, I really don't _have_ to," he says, and quick as lightning, he's on me.

I'm frozen with indecision, not sure if I should try to dodge him or stand my ground to protect Gordon to the best of my dubious ability, so I miss my window to actually _do_ anything, and the Joker shoves me to the side so hard I narrowly miss breaking my nose on the wall, catching myself with my hands and feeling them scrape open against the rough concrete.

I turn the second I've recovered, but it's too late: the Joker has caught Gordon's fist where Gordon tried to take a swing at him, twisting it painfully to the side as he crouches over him, and with the thing in his previously hidden hand—I now see that it was a hypodermic needle—he's stuck Gordon in the throat and is depressing a syringe full of clear fluid into his veins.

" _Stop_!" I order, pushing away from the wall. The Joker ignores me, of course, and I'm concerned that if I body-slam him the way I really want to do, it'll jar his hand in the exact most fatal way it could possibly be jarred, and since I don't really want to watch Gordon bleed out right in front of me, I have to stop, fingers balled in my skirt, furious and scared.

" _And_ …" the Joker announces, pulling the needle from Gordon's neck and rising to his full height, "done."

 _Now_ I give in to the urge to slam into him, though by this point it's more of a body check, and when he backs a couple of steps away, it seems evident that it's because it amuses him to do so rather than because I managed to budge him. The Joker warded off—for now, anyway, for as long as it pleases him—I drop back to a knee beside Gordon.

Whatever the Joker gave him is already hitting him hard—his eyes are starting to roll back in his head, although he's obviously fighting it. "Commissioner," I say, trying not to betray how panicked I feel, grabbing his hand with one hand and his shoulder with the other, "are you—"

His hand squeezes mine, hard, but then his grip goes loose and his eyes close.

I feel suddenly very alone, and very afraid.

My anger surges up again, and I shoot the Joker a ferocious look over my shoulder. "What did you give him?"

He blinks owlishly at me. "Couple'a ccs of midazolam," he says, and addressing me with that tone that says _um, you're stupid for not already knowing_ seems to be the game of the day. "Why, did you have something else in mind? Because, uh…." He glances at the needle, withdraws and depresses the plunger again a few sporadic times, and finishes, "I could still give him an _embolism_ , if that's a better—"

"Why?" I ask flatly, cutting him off. Sparked by the rush of anger, along with the horror and the stress I've already experienced today, I can feel a thickness in my throat, a heat in my face. _Not now_ , I tell myself firmly, though I reorient my stare from the Joker to Gordon's slack face, since there's a good chance I won't be able to hold my composure (such as it is) for very long.

The Joker shakes his head, tosses the needle to the side—it makes a little plastic clatter as it bounces off the floor and then rolls away, well out of reach—and runs a hand through his hair, passing me on his way back to the entry. "It's a win- _win_ , Emma," he lectures me. "I don't want _him_ awake right now, he gets to escape the, ah… _excruciating_ pain of his horribly mangled foot—what's not to like about this, uh, turn of events? Hmm?"

I bow my head, still holding Gordon's hand in mine. Acknowledging the possibility of tears seems to have just hastened them along, despite how inconvenient the timing. I take a moment—just a few seconds to let them out as silently as possible, knowing that trying to hold them back will only guarantee a bigger explosion at a worse time. The pain in my throat eases somewhat, but not much, and looking at Gordon through the blur just makes it worse.

I'm supposed to help him. I'm supposed to find a way to get him out of this, but I'm no closer to helping than I was yesterday, and now he's been hit with a dose of sedatives, which can't be good for the head injury he seems to have or the state of his foot.

 _Batman was right._ I never should have committed to playing this game. It was foolish and arrogant to think I could do any good; the Joker's a weak spot for me, and I'm weak and selfish for not acknowledging that from the beginning.

 _But if he wasn't using him as bait to string me along, he might have just killed Gordon by now_ , I think, a weak attempt to shore myself up: there's always someone against whom he could use a high-ranking cop as leverage. I'm just his _preferred_ target, because I'm personal to the Joker, and because Gordon and the Joker are both personal to me. Personal always hurts more.

I hear a tiny beep, and I glance quickly over my shoulder, trying to hide as much of my doubtless-reddened face as possible behind my hair while still trying to get an idea what the Joker's up to.

He's holding a camera with both hands, at about waist level so it's of a height with my eyes, lens trailed on me, and he's moving closer. I turn away immediately.

"Turn that off," I say. I'm working hard to conceal the fact that I was crying half a second ago, so my voice comes out cold.

"Don't be like that, Emma," he chastises me, and if I wasn't trying to hide from the camera I would glare at him. Instead, I just keep my head ducked over Gordon, hair curtaining my face.

The Joker stops moving closer once he's within a few feet of me. There's a moment's quiet, punctuated only by the rustle of his clothing—he's probably showing the camera the work he's done with Gordon—then he prods, "Wanna tell your fellow _citizens_ what's going on?"

I keep my face down, but I take the chance to learn whatever I might be able to. "I might if I knew," I say pointedly.

"Give it a shot," he encourages me, but I just shake my head in silence.

After a second, he obligingly moves to fill the dead air. " _Well_ —as everyone can _see_ —you're not at the po _lice_ station anymore." A weighted pause, then he rushes to add, "Of course, that's not because they _released_ you, like I _told_ them to, so that puts us all in a sort of, uh… _tricky_ situation."

At this, I finally do look up. The camera's still pointed at my face, but I look right past it, staring at the Joker's face, keeping my expression as blank as possible, because I don't know what his angle is and I don't know how I should play this. _He_ was the reason that the cops didn't get the chance to release me (not that they _would_ have, going by March's stance, but the point is they weren't allowed to lose fair), and he knows it, I know it, and Batman knows it, but Gotham as a whole doesn't, at least not for sure.

I could tell them, but I don't know yet if that's the wisest option, and at any rate, this isn't _live_. If I say anything the Joker doesn't want me to, he can just cut and start over until I'm singing his script. I look at him, searching for clues, and, feeling my gaze on him, he flashes black eyes up to me, away from the camera viewer.

They tell me nothing. He just watches me for a second, then flashes a rapid grin at me and goes on: " _So_ , given the _alteration_ of plans, and because I'm a, uh, spec _tac_ ularly generous guy, I'm calling a mulligan. Whaddya say, Gotham? Let's… mmm, let's _start over_."

Surprise compels me to speak. "You'll let him go?" I know even as the question leaves my mouth that it's foolish—the Joker's not going to give up an advantage, at least not unless he's trading it for a _bigger_ advantage—and he hisses negatively in response, confirming it.

" _Nooo,_ no no no. Start from scratch? _No._ I have a better idea."

My eyes follow his gloved hand as he tucks it into the pocket of his overcoat and then pulls it out again, fingers clasped around something small. He holds the hand out towards me now, getting it into frame so that his viewers can see it, and says, "Emma."

I know I have to take what he's offering me.

I don't. I can't bring myself to it. I eye his fist, trying to mask my fear with caution (badly, I think), and ask, "What is that?" I say the words softly, as though I can keep the camera—and ultimately Gotham—from eavesdropping on this conversation.

He wiggles his closed hand back and forth, humming encouragingly. "You'll never know unless you _take_ it."

My mind is racing, trying to predict the outcome of this, to prepare myself for whatever he's about to pass to me. It's small enough to fit in his hand, but the Joker doesn't need _big_ to cause devastation, and I rack my brain (keys to some other captive's car? poison? some poor soul's severed finger?) even as I slowly reach out, centering my palm beneath his hand. He opens his fingers and drops something into it.

The item is not much bigger around than an E-battery, though it's wider. The base looks and feels like metal, and there's a little square plastic case on top, attached to the base with a hinge. Through the case, I can see a small toggle switch.

" _That_ ," the Joker says, pointing a purple finger proudly at the object, "is a detonator. And somewhere in Gotham, there's a _bomb_."

This is bad news. I immediately try to push the detonator back into his hand, but he holds up his palm, signaling for me to stop, and says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold your horses, there, Em—don't wanna do _that_ until you know what it _entails_."

"I don't _care_ what it entails—"

"Oh, you do," he promises, and I know if he's bothering to tell me that, it must be true. It doesn't make it any easier to hold onto the detonator, though.

He waits till I draw my hand back, still leaving my fingers splayed open, refusing to grasp the thing properly, before he decides to elaborate. "Now. This bomb is hidden _carefully_ , wherever it is—maybe in a stadium locker, maybe in a train station maintenance closet… maybe beneath a manhole cover on I-98. I dunno. The only thing that's guaranteed is that _that_ bomb is in a high-traffic zone, and when it's detonated, it is going to have a, uh—" He clears his throat—" _explosive_ impact on a lot of people's lives."

"Please," I whisper without meaning to. He ignores me.

"See, the new game consists of… one _very_ simple choice. And lucky you, Em—you're the one who gets to make that choice!"

His tone is full of enthusiasm. Still refusing to look directly at the camera, despite the fact that he seems to be encouraging it by pushing it close to my face, I stare dead-eyed at him. He deflates a little, sighing, and takes a knee on the dirty floor.

"All right, listen." He pauses to lick his lips, goes on: "Here are your options. You flip that switch. And _Jim_ here—" He swivels the camera to Gordon's slack face, then rapidly back to mine, which I imagine is looking increasingly shell-shocked—"lives to fight another day. _However_ … if you _don't_ want to set off that bomb, if you don't want to conscience the thought of causing… the _death_ and the _destruction_ … you hand it back to me. And I blow up _Commissioner Gordon_ instead."

My mouth is dry again. After so much time passing since he asked me to take responsibility for the lives of others, or demanded that I abandon it—not only in word, but in deed—I've managed to convince myself that he moved past that urge with regards to me. It was a foolish hope. Somehow, I force myself to swallow, and in that same soft tone, I say, "You're still playing that game with me?"

"We never stopped." The words are crisp and matter-of-fact and almost unbearably cruel. "So, what's it gonna be, Emma? Go with the greater good and sacrifice your friend? Or indulge that… impressive selfish streak of yours?" He lets the words sit for a minute, then, lazily, adds, " _Well_ , you don't have to choose right away. Lemme see—the twenty-four hour window seems like it was a bit of a wash, so let's say…" He digs an old pocket watch out of a pocket, holding it close to the camera so that the recording will pick up the ticking, and says, "…midnight. How's that suit?"

He doesn't wait for an answer, tucking the watch away again. I feel stricken, immobile—although the camera's trailed on me, doubtless capturing every emotion I'm feeling as it parades across my face, I can't seem to follow my usual instinct to turn away, to hide from the judgment of the whole city.

He gives me a second, then stretches out his hand again, putting it back into frame. "So—still feel like handing that back to me?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> par for the course with like, drugging and periods of unconsciousness in fiction, I took a little liberty with the actual amount of time a dose of midazolam would take to knock a person out. Poor Gordon. This chapter marks the move into the final act of the story- I think we've got about six chapters to go, covering this final day.
> 
> Next: even more arguing, an awkward ride, and the Joker puts a subset of his plan into play, because he's never quite happy running just one game at once. See you then!


	10. Chapter 10

The question snaps me out of my paralysis. I close my hand over the plastic case, drawing it back to my chest, suddenly afraid that he'll make a grab for it—even if he's not serious, it seems like something he'd do, just because he thinks it'd be funny. He laughs, a little giggle through his nose, which tells me I'm not too far off, and I have to clear my throat before I can speak: "I'll… hang on to it for a little while."

"Oh, well." His feigned disappointment does a poor job at masking his glee. "Don't hold onto it for _too_ long. Midnight comes and you haven't made a choice? You lose it all."

"Yeah, thanks, I got it," I say, a little too sharply, but I can't help myself.

He doesn't respond to that. He just holds the camera on my face for another moment, and then I hear the little beeping that corresponds to the camera being switched off.

"Well," he announces brightly, rising smoothly to his feet and turning the viewing screen back around, "I think that'll do. Any notes?"

"You're a fucking shithead."

He actually looks away from the camera then, meeting my gaze with dark and inscrutable eyes, but I'm too upset to be properly afraid of the consequences of mouthing off at the moment. "A little _crude_ , but fair," he pronounces, and reaches towards me again. I jerk back, and he actually rolls his eyes—just a flash, but easily visible against the black paint. "I was _gonna_ offer to hold onto that for you," he says, sounding too peevish to be truly annoyed.

I shake my head. He licks his lips rapidly, looks around like he's worried someone might overhear, then leans in a little closer and says, "I'm not _planning_ to flip the switch. Not until you give the go-ahead. That's cheating."

_Because you have such a problem with cheating_ , I think, and although I don't say it aloud, I think he can see it in my eyes, because I spot a corresponding gleam in his. "I just thought you might want to stash it somewhere safe until you make up your mind," he goes on.

I shake my head. Despite how eager I was to hand the thing back to him before, get rid of the weight of responsibility, I can't do it now that I know the rules. The metal corners of the detonator bite into my palm, but I hold it tight.

"No?" he asks, then clicks his tongue. "All right. Suit yourself." He straightens up again and begins to move away.

I watch his retreating back as he heads to the door. It takes me till he's halfway across the room to come up with something to say that isn't just a nasty screed of blue. "What is the point of all this?"

He glances at me, briefly, over his jutting shoulder as he moves. "No point, Emma. We've been over this before. Keep up." He reaches the door, opens it, and hands the camera out to a waiting henchman, issuing some instructions that are too quiet for me to make out.

"That is _bull_ shit," I declare. I'm loath to leave Gordon's side, but there's another fight brewing if I have my way, and I don't exactly want to remain crouched on the floor for it. I get to my feet, sliding the detonator into my pocket as I go, uncomfortably aware of its little weight there.

He finishes whatever he's doing before he deigns to turn back to me. "Come again?"

" _No point, there is no point_ ," I say, a sarcastic repetition of his sometimes-creed. "That's a lie. God, you're _such_ a liar." He's starting to eye me a little more closely, his attention setting off warning bells, but as always, I have trouble stopping once I really get going on a rant. "I mean, you keep your word—when your word is _horrible_ , which it usually is—but this? All _this_?" I move my hand rapidly up and down to indicate him from head to toe. "This 'I am but a humble leaf on the winds of chance and chaos' act? Trying to pretend like you're _above_ an ideology? I don't buy it. I never have. Everybody has something to prove, and you're not an exception, O _Enlightened_ One."

He's drawn close, but for once, he doesn't go for the throat—just draws his hands up to rest them on his hips, tilts his head, and narrows his eyes appraisingly at me. "Really? And, uh… _what_ am I trying to prove exactly, Emma?"

"That everyone sucks!" I practically explode. "That everyone is _just_ as bad as you, that we've just got varying degrees of skill in covering it up! Sure, I don't think the idea consumes every waking moment of your day, I don't think _everything_ you do is driven by a desire to prove it—there's plenty of room for just your everyday shittiness—but these big, city-encompassing schemes you like to pull? Trying to force people to turn on each other? With _limited success_ , I might add," I point out, and he pulls an ugly pout, like I've hurt his feelings. _As if_.

I draw a breath, distracted by his face, and close my eyes for a second to gather my thoughts. I shake my head and return my stare to him. "You keep trying to run circles around me whenever this comes up. Wouldn't it be easier just to admit that that's what you want? _Just_ to me. Just so it's out in the open."

He watches me with those hooded, heavy eyes for a long enough time that I start to feel vastly uncomfortable. I know I've technically made a mistake, calling him out like this, but I long ago lost the patience required to walk on eggshells around his ego, his mercurial temper. I can't take the words back and I don't want to, and as hard as it is, I meet him stare for stare.

He sucks in some air, leans close, and, in a conspiratorial tone I know well, he says, "Y'know… _my doctor_ would say you're projecting."

_Of course_ , I think as my breath leaves me in a brief stutter. _Can't answer truthfully, then turn it into a joke_. For a second, I thought maybe I was able to break through, that he might give me just a moment of emotional honesty, even if it was accompanied by pain and punishment. _Silly me_.

"As for _me_ ," he continues casually, "well… Em, you're operating on a fundamental misunderstanding, here. See, I _know_ everyone is savage under those layers of… civilization. It's not something I have to _prove_. And _you_? You're a prime example. Twist you up a little bit, and that _savagery_ comes out. The interesting thing about _you_ is that you have no set _sticking_ point." He stabs his finger into my shoulder for emphasis; I scowl and swat it away.

" _You_ ," he continues, undeterred, "are always _scrambling_ for footing. What's the word you used— _ideology_? Most people, they've got one, even if they _abandon_ it when the going gets a little rough, but _you_ don't even have that. You're a blank slate, Em. Unpredictable. That's not a _bad_ thing," he hurries to assure me, as if I actually care what he thinks. "Matter of fact, it's what I like about you. It's what makes you amusing."

He leans back a little, smiling at me—not with his mouth, but with his eyes, and yet it still comes across as entirely fake. It seems like he's inviting me to interject, but I've said enough for now, have the distinct sense that continuing to talk will get me into more trouble than I want, so I stay quiet, ignoring the creeping prickle of my skin crawling along my shoulders as the feigned smile turns more and more ghastly.

Finally, he sucks in a quick breath and, pitching his voice low like he's telling me a secret, he says, "That's what you are, Em. _Amusement_. You and everyone else in Gotham. Good… uh, _evil_?" He grimaces, wiggles his fingers dismissively "Doesn't matter. Don't care. It's _all_ a game. All that's left is whether or not you can _play_ that game. _So_."

He pushes his hands into his pockets, rolls onto the balls of his feet, and watches me expectantly. "What d'you think the next move is, Em?"

I stare at him for a good few seconds before venturing out with: "Taking… the Commissioner… to the hospital?" It's a craps shoot, but I owe it to Gordon to try.

The Joker laughs aloud, a heinous high giggle that scrapes along my nerves as I glance over at Gordon, still and gray. "That's not so much _playing_ the game as it is _breaking_ it," the Joker points out.

"I have no problem with that."

"Oh, don't be boring," he scolds. I look at him askance— _really?_ —and he studies me for a thoughtful second before clicking his tongue loudly and saying, "Ah, well. If you don't have any good ideas, I guess you'd better come with me."

As he reaches for me, I step quickly back towards Gordon. "I'm not leaving him."

He widens his eyes in a caricature of confusion. "Well, you're not _staying,_ " he says.

"Why not?" I challenge him, and he cocks his head, rolling his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip as he waits obligingly for my follow-up. I don't necessarily think I'll talk him into it, but the Joker does enjoy a good argument, and I'm putting off more difficult things by engaging him in one. "You just asked me to choose between killing him and killing a bunch of strangers. I might choose to kill him, and if I do, it's only fair that I get to spend as much time with him leading up to it as possible."

"Spending more time with him gives him an _unfair_ advantage," he counters, pronouncing the word mockingly—we both know he isn't particularly concerned with what's fair or not, unless he can turn it to his advantage. "You need objectivity; you can't get _that_ if you're sitting by his sickbed, _wailing_ over the fact that you didn't do _more_ for him."

_Okay, ouch_. His logic is sound, and more than that, he's displaying that peculiar insight he shows from time to time, describing to me more or less exactly how I feel, and it gives me the heebie-jeebies. I don't like it when he pokes around inside my brain.

He must see my distaste in my expression, because he cocks an eyebrow, looking just a touch smug. "Should I go on, or…?" Rather than finishing the question, he just extends a hand, holding it still in the space between us.

Ball's in my court. I know I should put up more of a fight for Gordon's sake, and I'm still feeling racked and upset—angry—about the video, and the choice that he's put before me. I don't feel the pull to him that I felt at the beginning of all this, the urge to go against my best judgment and gravitate towards him—

—except that's a lie. I always feel that pull. I don't think it'll ever go away.

I can feel the loathing twisting my expression, though I'd be hard-pressed to say whether it's directed more towards him or myself, even as I put my hand in his.

He grins, sharp and quick as a knife to the gut, and tightens his hand around mine, pulling me close. He tucks my hand against his side and practically _sails_ out of the room, all but dragging me along with him.

I keep up as best I can. The detonator in my pocket collides with my thigh with every step I take, and right at the start I have to quell a sudden wave of nausea—but it's gone almost as quickly as it came, and not long after, we're out in the overcast Gotham light and the Joker is handing me into the back of the van, a perfect gentleman for the moment, because things are going exactly his way.

I settle on the floor again, leaning back against the wall. When the Joker seats himself on the crate near to me, I shoot him a dirty look and change sides, putting about as much distance between us as I can manage in the confined space, which makes him smile, a brief, genuine-looking smile that isn't directed at me or anyone else and so must be an accident. He doesn't follow me, and Gumby takes off as soon as we're settled.

I think the Joker probably wants me to ask where we're headed, so of course I refuse to give him the satisfaction. Instead, I listen idly to the radio as it cranks out eighties hits. After a minute, the song changes, and I groan as I recognize the new one.

Wight's hand goes to the knob, but the Joker speaks up: "No, no, no. Leave it. I like it."

For me, at least, the next four minutes and fifty-four seconds are incredibly awkward: two presumably baffled henchmen in the front seat, the Joker sitting zen on a storage crate, eyes closed, head tilted back against the wall, and me, kneeling in the corner with a face hot enough to fry an egg on, all four of us silently enduring REO Speedwagon's _Can't Fight This Feeling_. I refuse to read into the lyrics, because it seems like the kind of thing the Joker would _want_ me to do, but even so, it's the most surreal moment I've experienced with him yet. (That's saying a lot.)

It's not really the kind of thing you recover from, so even after the song transitions into another one—Chicago, _If You Leave Me Now_ , not quite as bad but close—it takes me a while to cool down and focus my thoughts. Of course, the second I do, I wish I hadn't. There's a _lot_ going on in my head right now.

I gingerly trace the shape of the detonator through my skirt, hoping it's secure. I have no doubt that the Joker's wiring work can be flawless if he wants it to be, but he's also the kind of guy who might intentionally design a shoddy device so that when it goes off unplanned he can play cringing and embarrassed, just for laughs. The fact that _he'd_ be the only one laughing probably wouldn't occur to him, and it definitely wouldn't matter if it did.

Kill a whole swath of strangers I don't know and don't care for, or kill just one person, who I happen to like quite a bit. God, it's a shittier version of the red button riddle. There's always a trick to these things, something that ensures that the selfish decision is always the wrong one, so I _should_ have my answer right there: suck it up and sacrifice Gordon, no matter how much damage it might do to him and his family and me.

It's probably what the man himself would tell me to pick, had he been conscious to hear the choice laid out for me. He'd certainly been willing to urge me away from him for the sake of my own safety, despite my claim of being able to help him somehow, and I know he takes his job and his duty to the citizens of Gotham seriously. I don't think he'd be able to stomach being the reason a bunch of innocent strangers lost their lives.

But…

Gordon's not here, and this is the Joker's game, and despite how obvious the solution seems, things are _always_ rigged somehow when the Joker's involved. Sometimes, the trick is that there is no trick. Sometimes, the trick is exactly what you'd expect it to be, and sometimes the trick lies within an option you hadn't even realized was on the table. Trying to predict the results of any given action is pointless, circular, _I knew you'd know I know you knew_.

The fact is this: the Joker gave me the detonator, which means any choice I make with it will hurt me, _including_ "make no choice at all."

I lift my eyes, looking at him at last—he's leaning forward to give some quiet instruction to Gumby, but he must feel my gaze, because even as he speaks, his eyes creep to their corners, finding me. He pauses, then, pitching his voice to carry to me, he says, "Did you want something, Em?"

_I would like to take a steel-toed boot directly to your balls, just one good shot_ , I think, but somehow I don't think that would go over well—or worse, he might _like_ it. I give him a toothy smile that doesn't go anywhere near my eyes and say, "A pit stop to McDonalds? I'm getting hungry." Actually, my stomach hasn't stirred since I discovered the homeowners' bodies earlier this morning. That's probably a bad sign, especially since I can get a little _fainty_ when I don't eat for long enough (and stress might also be a contributing factor).

"Sorry," he says, settling back on his crate. "No time."

I scowl, and it's only half-fake. "You asked."

"I was being polite."

"Tshh," I hiss through my teeth, letting him know exactly what I think of _that_.

He watches me meditatively for a second, then yields a little. "Maybe after."

"After _what_?"

He just tilts his chin down and gives me a mysterious look, then changes the subject. "Given any thought to what you plan to do with that detonator?"

"I already know what I'm going to do." It's a total bluff, but I'm annoyed enough with him that I have no nerves whatsoever and I deliver it coolly, deadpan.

He levels a quick, assessing stare at me. " _Oh_ , you do."

"Yyyup."

"Well, then: what's the verdict?"

I narrow my eyes at him. "I have till midnight, right?"

"Mm," he says, an affirmative sound, even though he looks suspicious.

I settle my back against the wall of the van and close my eyes. "You'll find out before then."

He laughs. He might be genuinely amused by the cheek, or he might be plotting my slow and agonizing death (dark horse vote says "both"), but I'm committed to ignoring him till I can't anymore, so I don't bother to try and figure out which.

We bump along for a while, long enough that I know we're moving into another part of town, and aside from the radio still cranking out tunes ( _Girls Just Wanna Have Fun_ ), the commute is fairly silent. Eventually, though, the van pulls to a stop with a whine of brakes, the henchmen get out, and the respite is over.

"Up, up, up," the Joker chants even as I open my eyes and start unfolding myself.

"I'm _going_ ," I complain, but I'm not fast enough for him—he grabs my shoulder, pushes me towards the back door even as Wight pulls it open. I hop out, looking around as the Joker lands beside me.

We're in another alleyway, outside a service entrance. Past the narrow walls, I see buildings and more buildings, all tall. Uptown. Risky. Police response is tighter up here—they know who's handing over the donation money that keeps them driving fresh cruisers.

The Joker turns back to the van and drags the crate he was sitting on close towards the edge, then pops it open. I get one look inside and snort. _Guess I was right to keep my distance_.

" _God_ , I love this country," the Joker declares beneath his breath. From the hodgepodge of explosives and weaponry, he pulls out an intimidating high-capacity shotgun and a large handful of shells, shoving the shells in his pocket and then taking more and popping them neatly into the chamber.

I reach past him, eyeballing a basic handgun, and, barely breaking stride, he slaps the back of my hand so hard that it stings. "Shit!" I complain, yanking it back to my chest. "I don't get one?"

"Absolutely not," he says, and snaps the shotgun barrel back into place, glancing at Wight, and Gumby, checking that they're masked up and similarly armed.

I don't actually _want_ a gun—at least, not to participate in whatever fuckery is about to go down. If anything, I want one so I can have a better chance of stopping it. I don't know what he's planning, but I've got that sick, horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach again, the one that yells that I'm keeping company with a monster, that in doing so I'm partially responsible for his monstrous acts—and I don't want to _see_ any more of those acts.

On impulse, I grab his wrist, fingers pressing the bare spot above the glove, and he turns to meet my eyes, brows raised like he's not sure _why_ I'm daring to touch him, _what_ could be so important.

My throat is doing its best to choke the words back, possibly because in my heart I know they're futile, but still, I say, "Don't do this."

His brows climb higher. "Do what, Em?" he asks, glancing over my head towards the street, checking for prying eyes.

"Whatever… whatever you're about to do." I don't know exactly what that is, but if he needs guns, it's not going to be fucking good. "Please."

Maybe some day, he'll find some way to find that the joke is _funnier_ if I get to stop him, and he'll let me do it, but not today, not right now. His eyes flash back to me, and I can see that he's dead set on making sure that whatever's about to happen happens. Mildly, he says, "You don't even know what it is I'm about to do. Maybe you'll like it," he adds, and presses his lips together like he knows a secret I'd kill to learn.

"That seems unlikely."

"Yes, it does," he admits, pulling on his best sheepish face, then it's gone in a blink. As Wight and Gumby part from us to scout ahead, he yanks his hand out of my grip, moves it to the van door and slams it shut, holding the shotgun grip with the other and slinging it up, then down to rack it. "Keep up," he says, and brushes past me.

I grasp at his elbow, prepared to drag him to a stop, but he jerks his arm and it slides away beneath my fingertips as he passes by. " _Keep up_ ," he barks over his shoulder, "or I'll put one in your knee and make you wish you _had_."

I briefly consider running anyway, if only to escape the sight of whatever horrors he plans to unleash next, but truthfully, he doesn't need the threat to keep me close. I've got this responsibility he put on me weighing me down; by his rules, if I don't choose by midnight, then he executes both shitty options. If I leave now, there's no guarantee I'll be able to fall back in step with him in time to save anyone.

I follow.

Wight and Gumby, in their clown masks, are holding the door, and once the Joker reaches it, they duck into the building to take point.

I follow the Joker in through a set of catering kitchens: empty, though they smell like fresh food, so that probably hasn't long been the case. He and the henchmen are moving fast, and I practically have to run to keep up. We exit into a long corridor—this is starting to look like a hotel—and Gumby leads the way across the hall, one door up, shoves it open, and fires his gun. Wight's beside him in an instant, shooting into the room, and as the screams start up, they ease their way further in, checking the corners with militaristic rigidity.

The Joker enters close at their heels, loosing one shotgun blast, then another, and the gunfire blends into a roar as I come to a stop outside of the room and, unable to quite throw myself into the chaos beyond, I stop for a second, pressing my forehead lightly against the door. If the gunfire wasn't deafening me, then the blood rushing in my ears would do the trick, and I feel my heart pounding hard in my chest, rapping at my sternum like a fist. No. _No_.

It doesn't help to know that I couldn't have stopped this, that I know nothing about it, that it's obviously some necessary cog in the Joker's overall plan that would likely have happened with or without me. I feel panicked, guilty, like I need to run from what's happening behind this door, and I actually turn, preparing to flee without even really thinking about it.

People are sticking their heads out into the corridor from other rooms further down, looking scared, confused. I stare for a second, and it takes a moment for it to get through to me—yes, this is a hotel, and there are other people in other meeting rooms, people who might be in danger, or people who might could do something more to help than I can. I focus intently on the nearest, a dark-haired woman with wide, frightened eyes who's drifted halfway out from her doorway, and I'm striding towards her before thinking it through.

She gasps and shrinks back, and I stop short, realizing that _I'm_ coming from the same direction as the gunfire, in a weird getup of a dirty-hemmed white dress and big black boots, and if she doesn't recognize me from the news reports of the past couple of days (and timing says the Joker's little video hasn't made it to the TV outlets yet), she probably still assumes I'm part of the newest plan to torture Gotham's citizens. She wouldn't be completely wrong.

I put my hands up, showing her my palms, and trying to pitch my voice to carry over the clatter of gunfire behind me, not particularly surprised when it comes out a little bit hoarse, I say, "Call the police. _Now_." I cast a quick, harried eye over the other people visible in the hallway as the woman I was talking to vanishes quickly into the room, slamming the door shut behind her, and I scream, "RUN."

It's enough to jar them into action, and people start flowing into the hallway, forming a panicked stampede into the opposite direction. I watch them go, registering that the screams from the room the Joker is in have all but stopped, though I can still hear gunfire. I realize that I've started crying again.

_Go, just go_ , my instinct urges me. It'd be so easy to just join the crowd, ditch this whole horrible fucked-up situation and run as fast and as far as I can, to stop thinking about Gordon and the mystery bomb and turn my back on the Joker and Gotham City forever.

There's another abrupt spatter of bullets, then the sound stops, leaving me with a ringing in my ears that's almost worse, because if they've stopped shooting, then it means there's no one left that they want to shoot.

I bring my fist up, roughly wiping away tears, sniffing hard as I gather whatever strength I have left. I might as well be chained to his wrist. Of _course_ I can't leave.

Slowly, I turn, and my feet take me back towards the room as if they're independent of me. I reach the doorway, take a deep, steadying breath, and look slowly around the corner, mostly hiding, checking out the scene with just one eye.

The people on the floor look like mannequins. The blood spilled across the white marble is so bright that it doesn't look real. The Joker, shotgun resting in the crook of his arm, has paused, and is looking back towards the doorway—looking for me, I realize, as he spots me and smiles, just for a second. He lifts his free hand, flicks two fingers in a wordless command— _come_.

I don't want to, but I'm on autopilot, and I slowly enter the room. I pick my way around a pool of blood right at the threshold, coming from a prone man in a security uniform—the first casualty, going by his position—and drift close to the center of the room, looking around despite myself.

He'd interrupted some kind of luncheon. The dead people are all in nice clothes, and there's a long table at the side of the room, set up with food, open bottles of wine and champagne on ice.

"Em?" the Joker prods me, calling my attention, and I look at him, stricken. He lifts his eyebrows, an unspoken, frivolous question— _what's up?_

"You just killed a _lot_ of people." It's an utterly idiotic thing to say, but I have less control over my mouth at the moment than I do my feet.

He _tsks_ disapprovingly, though there's something in his eye that looks positively delighted. "I just killed a lot of _lawyers_ , Emma," he says in his favorite pedantic tone. "Don't exaggerate."

My attention skips away from him, called by the sound of whimpering and groaning—someone alive. It's a man, on the floor, dragging himself towards the corner. Blood soaks his leg, which answers the question _why isn't he running from here like a bat out of hell_?

The Joker turns his attention to the survivor as well, clicks his tongue against the corner of his mouth, and strides over to him. The survivor's whimpering reaches a fever pitch as the Joker draws near, but instead of reloading and blasting the man's head to pieces like I expect him to, he just crouches down in front of him, empty shotgun still draped lovingly over his elbow.

" _Hi_ , there," he says, low and inviting.

I'm wandering, closing in on the two of them, but at an angle—it's not intentional, I'd prefer to move in a straight line, but it's like I'm drunk, crossing the room at a diagonal.

_Drunk. That sounds good_. I find myself next to the spread on the table without having planned to get there, and I glance over to see an unopened bottle of Dom Perignon, sweating in an ice bucket. I grab it by the neck and pull it out. Vaguely, I find myself thinking, _I don't have a gun, and the kitchen knife is back at the house, but this could serve as a club if I need it to—once, at least_.

The survivor is making quiet, strangled sounds of pain, like he's trying _very_ hard not to, as if he has any chance of avoiding the Joker's deadly attention at this point. _Already in the crosshairs, buddy_.

The Joker says, "You know why I'm here."

_He does?_ I glance across the room, seeking out the henchmen. It's easy to find them; they're the only two men left upright in the room. Wight stands guard at the door, recognizable because of his size, and Gumby flanks the Joker, gun at the ready should the survivor prove to be trouble.

The survivor gasps, swallows, and then, wordlessly, he nods. The Joker hums along, an affirmative sound to go with his affirmative gesture, and with his free hand, he reaches into an inside pocket in his coat.

"I'm going to pass you—" he announces dramatically—"a notepad and a pen." He produces them from his coat with an emphatic flourish. "You write down what I need to know inside. Sound good?"

He doesn't wait for an answer, just tosses the pad and pen down to the floor next to the guy. The guy stares at them for a moment, then slowly lifts his eyes back to the Joker. Even from a distance, I can see the beads of sweat lining his scalp.

"If I do that," he says slowly, around quick, panicked breaths, "you won't kill me?"

I can imagine the look on the Joker's face, his favorite faux-innocent _why, little ol' me_? expression. "Of course not," he says, all false outrage.

The lawyer's eyes flicker to Gumby, then back to the Joker, then past him again, towards Wight. "And the clowns," he says, sounding more decisive now. " _They_ won't kill me, either."

The Joker laughs, a screaming laugh, one that most often appears when he's in peak performing mode. " _Lawyers_ ," he says upon recovery, dragging the word out. "Always reading the fine print. _"Okay_ , okay. They won't kill you either. You have my word."

There's a tense pause, and I stare unblinking at the tableau they make even as my fingernails scrape at the foil capping the champagne bottle. Eventually, the lawyer breaks it, reaching forth hurriedly as if afraid the Joker will bite, scooping up the notepad and pen and scratching something out on the paper. The Joker glances over his shoulder at me, probably to check if I'm watching, though I'm not sure the blank stare he receives in response gives him any validation.

"There," the lawyer says, flinging the notepad back at the Joker. "There. That's the address."

Completely at his leisure, the Joker delicately lifts the notepad off the floor. There's blood at the corner from where it encountered the puddle seeping out from the lawyer's leg. The Joker studies the little black lines for a second, then waves the notepad warningly at him. "You know if this isn't right, then the deal's off. _Way_ off."

"I know. I know. I swear, that's it."

"Well," the Joker says, rising to his feet and tucking the book away. " _I'm_ convinced. Emma, you want to kill this guy for me?"

The lawyer gasps, and I pause in my efforts to open the champagne long enough to give the Joker a dirty look (it's nice to know I'm recovering enough to do that). _Over my dead body_ am I going to kill someone at his behest.

He cackles. "Just kiddin'! But, uh…" He grimaces, an inauthentically apologetic look, and says, "You _know_ I can't just… let you _go_ , right?"

The lawyer starts to splutter, and the Joker raises his voice, talking over him in that crooning tone he seems to think is soothing: " _I_ know, _I_ know, but think of it from _my_ perspective! I can't just take the chance that you won't tell your boss what you just told _me,_ so…" As he trails off, I become aware that Wight has circled around behind the prone lawyer. In a split second, before the hapless guy can get out more than a short yell, he has him up, an arm around his throat, cutting off the blood to his brain.

The Joker waves. "Night night," he says, and even as the lawyer slumps in Wight's arms, he turns to Gumby, already done with him. "We better make tracks," he announces. "Someone will have heard…" He gestures in an absent circle around his head to indicate the room as a whole—"all this."

I finally get enough foil off, and wedge my thumbs in under the cork, aiming the bottle carefully. After a moment of tension, the cork flies out with a loud _pop_ , hurtling a few feet forward and colliding directly with the Joker's back.

He whirls on me, and I can't say if the terrible look on his face is because the sound was a little too close to the recent gunfire for his comfort or if he's just affronted that I dared to just shoot a cork at him. I don't care. I narrow my eyes at him, half-glaring and half-smirking, and say, "What? Not _amusing_ enough for you?" The first eruption of fizz has calmed down a little, and I lift the bottle and drink directly from it.

The Joker puts his hands on his hips, and in a tone of exaggerated disapproval, asks, "You really think that's a good idea right now?"

"Well, it beats dealing with you sober," I retort, and take another defiant pull from the bottle. It goes down smooth. I've never had champagne this nice before. It's a shame the circumstances prevent me from really enjoying it.

I could see us going back and forth all day, but I hear the sirens then, already too close for comfort, and Wight, holding the unconscious lawyer in a fireman's carry, the same way he'd taken me from the station, says, "Boss."

The Joker glances at him, pulls in an abrupt breath, and says, "Well. Time to go." He's on me in a few long-legged strides, grabbing me by the wrist, and fighting him seems too hard just now, so I let him drag me fast from the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emma's gonna do her damndest to get lit so she can deal with this situation tipsy. There was a line from Mystery Men (i.e. the best comedy movie ever I will _fight_ you) in this chapter. McDonald's isn't paying me anything and I actually avoid it as much as possible, it's just Emma's favorite fast-food joint (but we all know what Emma's taste is like).
> 
> Next time: a reunion.


	11. Chapter 11

Turns out I was right about uptown being a risky place for the Joker to pull his usual shenanigans. The sirens sound louder the moment we leave the room, and they quickly build as we move fast, retracing our steps back to the alleyway. By the time we burst out the door, they've reached a screaming crescendo.

As he pauses to check the alley entry to see if it's blocked, I sing, "Someone's in _trouble_ —" more to bother him than because I'm feeling particularly playful at the moment.

He completely ignores me, just gestures to his employees, waving them towards the van. "Take that," he instructs them, sounding perfectly calm despite impending law enforcement. "Get outta here." I take the opportunity to take another healthy slug from the champagne bottle.

Gumby and Wight appear to exchange looks—it's hard to tell, they're still masked up—and Wight says, "Boss, are you—"

" _Now_!" the Joker barks, loud enough to hurt my ears, and I scowl, lifting my bottle hand to press my wrist against one ear in dramatic protest.

"Inside voices?" I suggest as the henchmen, clearly knowing better than to argue, break for the van, Wight still hauling the unconscious lawyer.

The Joker continues to ignore me. He pulls me towards a building across the alleyway, his grip communicating _keep up or get dragged_ without him having to say it, and tries a door, which appears to be locked.

The van peels out. I turn to watch, lifting the bottle to my mouth again as they slingshot their way out of the alley, and I don't see any cops yet, but the sirens are deafening—they have to be close by. I wonder how the henchmen feel about being used as live bait, because there's no way they'll be able to leave the area without catching the police's attention, which was doubtless the Joker's intent.

Speaking of the Joker: he's dropped my hand, and as I turn to see why, I'm met with the sight of him slamming his shoulder against the locked door, presumably reluctant to waste the effort of sending the henchmen off without him by shooting out the lock and drawing attention to himself. He rams the door once more, twice, his process unflinching and effective—on his third attempt, the frame splinters and the door gives way. If I didn't hate him so much right now, I might be impressed.

He grabs my hand again, scowling at the champagne bottle. "Drop that."

"Oh, absolutely not."

Fortunately for me, he's in too much of a hurry to insist. He rolls his eyes, just a flash, and drags me through the newly open doorway, and even as I rush to keep up so I don't lose my footing, I take another triumphant pull from the bottle. I'm under no obligation whatsoever to take this seriously—the cops being after him is _his_ problem, not mine. Matter of fact, it'd probably benefit me _more_ if they _did_ catch him: right now, I know where Gordon is, and if the Joker was in custody I'd have a chance at getting a team sent to rescue him before a bright henchman got the idea to move him.

A _chance_ , but not a _guarantee_. If Detective March was any indicator of the Gotham PD's general attitude towards me right now, they probably won't believe a word I say. Additionally, intentionally sabotaging the Joker's chances at escape seems a _little_ suicidal, and would certainly prompt him to retaliate if he manages to avoid capture. It's too much of a risk with no assurance of payoff. I'm not going to actively hinder him, but I'm damn well not going to _help_ him either.

The broken door leads to some kind of cleaning area for the building, and he hauls me through the room at breakneck speed—I get it, it won't be long before the cops form a perimeter, a perimeter that'll only be expanded if they discover the busted door and surmise that he escaped through it, but it's still a pain trying to keep up with him.

The cleaning room runs into a corridor, and I swig champagne as the Joker pauses for a second to look around. We're in some kind of office building, it looks like, and even as the thought crosses my mind, some poor drone exits the room just ahead of us. He's got a handful of papers, is looking down at them to start with, but as he draws closer he glances up and literally trips over his own feet when he realizes what he's looking at.

He falls backwards, papers flying, and the Joker lets go of my hand so he can freely bear down on the unfortunate soul. He's crouching over the worker before the guy can scream or recover, one gloved hand tight over his mouth and the other gripping his tie, and I hear him say "Shh, shh. Quiet, now. Parking garage. Where is it?"

He lifts his hand so the guy can speak, after stammering for a second, he manages to get out: "Just follow this hallway. Turn left at the end. Go till you reach the door."

"That's _very_ helpful," the Joker assures him, letting go of his tie and standing up. "Thank you. Run along now." The guy doesn't need to be told twice, practically crawling away now that he's free, vanishing into the same office that he came from. The Joker turns to grab my hand again, and then we're hurtling along once more, following the office worker's directions. The Joker doesn't seem worried by the possibility that the guy was lying, directing him to a dead end, and I'm not particularly concerned, either: it's a lot of pressure, having the Joker stare you down like that, and I don't think a lot of people are effective liars under that much pressure.

(Of course, I'm not particularly concerned by a lot right now. I've taken the bottle down by about halfway in the several minutes since I managed to get it open, and surprisingly—or perhaps not so surprisingly, given that my stomach is otherwise totally empty—it's hitting me pretty hard. I'm starting to feel pleasantly heavy, and the things that bothered me so much ten minutes ago don't seem to matter in quite the same way anymore. Alcohol is truly the solution to all the world's problems.)

The Joker is vocalizing softly to himself as we go along, "ba- _dum_ , ba- _dum_ , ba- _dum_ ," and if he was anyone else, I'd say it was nerves, anxiety about the presence of the police, but even lightheaded with champagne, I can't talk myself into believing it. There's no way he's worried. He coasts through life _knowing_ he'll make out like a bandit, get away with whatever he tries. Maybe it's even his relentless confidence that does it. Maybe it tricks us all into thinking there's no way someone _that_ sure of himself could possibly fail, and maybe we just let him get away with it. Maybe his whole existence is my fault.

_Or maybe I'm just buzzed and stupid right now_ , I think as we reach the end of the hallway and he turns a hard left. I'm a little slower to realize that we're turning, and bounce off the wall using my elbow. " _Ow_ ," I complain. The blow got my funny bone.

"Well," the Joker says superciliously, "you've got one hand tied up, what did you expect? _Boo_." This last is said almost as an aside to a woman who's heading down the hallway, and she screams and scrambles into the nearest doorway.

"These people you keep scaring are gonna tell the police you're here," I say, a little reproachfully.

"I hope they do," he says, sounding about as sincere as he can manage. By now we've reached the door to the parking garage, and he yanks me through. It's the middle of the work day, so the garage is pretty empty, and he looks around quickly before settling on an anonymous green sedan close by, circling around fast to the driver's side before letting my hand go. I know this game, I've seen it before, so I don't watch with particular interest as he starts yanking pieces to a slim jim from his pockets. Maybe I drink a little more from my bottle.

"What's going on?" I ask once I've swallowed back the booze.

He doesn't appear to be paying much attention to me. " _We_ … are running from the cops," he says lowly as he concentrates on putting the lock pick securely together.

"Yeah, no shit, I mean _before_ that." This time he deigns to look at me, eyebrow drawn up skeptically like he's got no idea what I'm talking about. I should know better by now than to ask him anything without exhaustive clarification, given how much he likes to play dumb. "The lawyer massacre, you talking to that one guy, with the notepad—what, what did he write in the book for you?"

He seems to deliberate for half a second, then he's got an answer ready to hand over: "Prizewinning salsa recipe," he says, then returns his attention back to picking the car lock.

I tilt my head back, making a noise that's halfway between a groan and a scream. "You think you're _so_ goddamned funny."

"Well," he mumbles with a twitch of his shoulder, "it's _in_ the _name_."

"You need a _new_ name."

"…I think it suits me."

" _Freeze_."

The voice doesn't belong to either of us, so naturally, I immediately disobey it, turning to see Detective March, on the ramp just above us, gun drawn. He looks a little rumpled, a little bloodshot after the gas attack, which gives him a sort of deranged mien—not that he needed it—and that's about all I'm able to see before the Joker grabs me from behind, winding his arm around my throat and putting me between him and the gun. He hasn't bothered to drop the slim jim; the cool metal bites into the side of my neck.

"Oh, god, and who says chivalry is dead," I mutter reflexively, though it mostly gets drowned by March's shout: "Joker, _right now_ , let her go and put your _hands up_."

"I thought you said _freeze_ ," the Joker says, his voice coming from somewhere around shoulder-level. He must look hilarious crouched down to try to fit behind my frame, although I'm sure the sight is _wasted_ on March. To me, quieter, he hisses, "What do you think, Em, I put a gun to your head and he'll let us walk?"

"Not likely," I say, not bothering to keep it down, tightening my fist on the bottle I'm still holding—I still haven't ruled out using it as a club.

As if to make my point, March calls out, "I will shoot _through_ her rather than let you two go. Do _not_ test me."

"He's not kidding," I tell the Joker, then to March: "And _he_ doesn't care. _Neither_ of you actually give a shit if I live or die, so really, I shouldn't even be _involved_ in this little standoff." Neither man backs down. It was a long shot anyway.

"Joker. This is your _last warning_ , let her go and _show me your hands_ ," March says, thumbing back the hammer on his gun.

"Ah, well, fair enough," the Joker mumbles in an undertone that I'm pretty sure is only meant for me. As he speaks, I feel a weight settle into my pocket, the one that doesn't already contain the detonator—then his arm disappears from my neck, and he pushes me, hard enough that I stumble a few paces clear of the car, totally out in the open.

As soon as I regain my balance, I look over at March, who is glancing swiftly from me to the Joker and back again, though he keeps his gun trained on the Joker, having understandably deemed him the bigger threat.

I look back at the Joker, who obligingly lifts his gloved hands slowly above the roof of the car, still holding the long metal slim jim tight. I don't know why he let me go instead of making March shoot through me— _except that's not true_ , I realize as I think about it for longer than a second; if he believed me when I said I was useless as a hostage, then splitting from me gives him the advantage: now March has to keep his eye on _two_ moving targets instead of just one.

I see his eyes flash over March double-time, taking in his disheveled appearance, the badge hanging from his neck, and I can almost see him calculating how best to dismantle this guy. He doesn't miss a beat before saying, " _Careful_ , detective. That gun goes off, and Commissioner Gordon dies in agony alone somewhere in the city."

"Well, that's not true, is it?" I say, almost laughing, and the Joker shoots me a quick sideways glance, warning me off, but the tides have turned with March's arrival, and the sabotage I was considering earlier now seems to be a much better bet. I'd promised Batman that I wouldn't choose the Joker over Gordon, and while I'm still not keen to see him get shot, I've also just been privy to another massacre by his hand, so maybe it's time.

I look at March and say, "Gordon's in a basement downtown. I'm not sure exactly where, but I can give you the rough area."

"Shut up," March and the Joker say in unison.

"Fuck you both, then," I say, taking another swig of champagne to hide the sudden surge of fury. I guess I can understand the Joker's annoyance at having a valuable secret betrayed (although in my defense, he should definitely have seen it coming) but March is just being a dick.

"Joker, drop what's in your hands," March orders.

The Joker practically pouts. "But it's _delicate_. And expensive."

"Drop what's in your hands," March repeats emphatically, "or I put a bullet in your shoulder."

The Joker sighs dramatically, then opens his fingers and lets the metal fall to the ground. Then he follows them.

March wasn't kidding—he opens fire immediately as the Joker drops to the ground behind the car, and I drop as well in some misguided attempt to put some distance between me and the bullets, scraping open the skin on my knees as they connect with the concrete, though I barely feel it.

"Hands up! Emma Vane, show me your hands!" March is bellowing even as he takes cover behind a support column, and I think _this is stupid, **I'm** not the one with like seven domestic terrorism events under my belt_ , but I finally abandon my bottle and lift my hands up.

March is talking rapidly into his walkie—calling for backup, probably, though I can't really make out the words—and from behind the car, the Joker yells " _FORE_!"

Something flies over the top of the car and lands between me and March with a noisy clatter. I've seen one of those motherfuckers before. That's a classic grenade, and despite the bullshit with the flag gun earlier today (or maybe because of it—he doesn't usually try to pull off the same joke twice, at least not in such quick succession) I am not willing to bet that it's a fake. " _Bomb_ ," I scream at March even as I stagger to my feet and run, the heels of my hands pressed hard to my ears. I _could_ take cover with the Joker, but my half-addled mind is pretty furious with him right now, so I dive behind another car across the aisle just as the grenade explodes.

It's plenty loud even through my blocked ears, but I don't think it's as strong as the grenade he threw that night last winter, or maybe he just threw it further than I expected: I don't really feel the shock of it, at least not the way I expect to. My ears are still ringing, but not too badly, definitely not badly enough to obscure the sound of screeching tires echoing loud through the whole parking garage as the car the Joker was trying to break into veers out of its parking spot, clips the bumper of a van, and zooms away as fast as the tight corners of the garage allow. (It's a little easier, I think, when one doesn't care whether they're hitting other cars or not.)

March's column appears to have kept him safe; he emerges and gives chase, firing as he goes. If he's aiming for the tires, he's doing a bad job (although maybe he's just disoriented from the explosion—Lord knows _I'm_ a little lightheaded, and I was further away from the grenade): the only shot to hit just blows out the tail light in a shower of sparks, and then the car swerves around the corner and it's lost to my sight.

March keeps chasing, but I need a minute. I sit heavily on the ground and lean back against the tire and regret drinking over half a bottle of Dom Perignon in about five minutes. My tolerance isn't too shabby, but I'm tired and stressed and hungry and it's all hitting me pretty hard.

"Oof, I hate it when he's right," I mumble, looking at the ugly gray ceiling of the parking garage.

March's voice reaches me again before March himself does: "—heading south on Liberty, I repeat, the Joker is in a green Sedan and has just left the parking garage for the Harkin Building and is currently heading south on Liberty. I need all available units in pursuit." By the time he gets to the end of his call, he's reached me, and practically glares down at me even as he asks, "Were you under cover? Can you walk?"

"As much cover as you can find in a parking garage, and yes, I'm pretty sure I can walk," I say sourly, bracing my back against the tire and starting to rise. March takes my arm, maybe worried I'll try to run (absolutely not, I feel too lead-footed to worry about bailing on him just yet).

"Come on. My car's just down on the next level. Come on." His hand on my arm is tight, and he sets a decent pace, though he's not as fast a walker as the Joker on a mission, so I don't have much trouble keeping up even though I _truly_ don't feel like it.

"Why are you here, anyway?" I ask. "The trouble was in the building next door."

"Hunch," he responds tersely.

"Good hunch."

"Where's Commissioner Gordon?"

"I _already_ … fucking told you," I say, my tone starting out high with frustration and then fizzling out into tired resignation. "Somewhere downtown. To the west of Trillium Park. It was the basement of something that looked like a project building to me. I didn't get street names or anything, but I'd know it if I saw it."

"Then we have to get you down there," he says, and keys up his walkie again. "Please respond, I have a potential report on Commissioner Gordon's location. I need SWAT and EMT to meet me downtown, on Hudson Street, immediately."

Someone on the other end of the walkie makes some incomprehensible sounds in response, but March seems to understand them, and releases his walkie as we approach an unmarked black car that I assume is his. He opens the passenger door, pushes me in, and then circles around the front, looking around in every direction like a particularly jittery terrier until he gets to the driver's seat.

"There aren't any henchmen around that I've seen," I tell him as he starts the ignition—too late to do any good, but maybe he'll ease up a little bit; he's so tense I'm afraid he'll snap.

"That you've _seen_ ," he repeats flatly, and takes off from the parking spot with a screech of tires and the start of a siren. I'd almost forgotten how untrusting March is. Still, he's at least less opaque about his feelings than the Joker is, and even if those feelings are _outright dislike_ , after a day spent with the Joker, that feels like some relief.

We leave the parking garage to a glare of sunlight, and I wince, reaching up to block my eyes. My hand never gets there—March lashes out, fingers clamped around my palm even as he swerves around and approaches a cop car road block that's appeared since the last time I saw the road.

"Would you _lay off_?" I growl, trying to throw him off, but he just forces my hand down to the center console.

"Let's keep the sudden movements to a minimum," he says in a decidedly unfriendly tone. "You're not handcuffed because we're in a hurry, but if you push me—" He doesn't bother to finish the threat, just rolls down his window as he reaches the police block. It looks like the cops there are packing up to go.

"He's heading south, near Trillium Park," he barks. "Intel says that's where Gordon is. He's probably planning to get there first and move him, or shoot him or something. I'm heading there now. Follow." He doesn't wait for a response, just takes off south, and it doesn't take long before the other cars are completely out of sight.

Even with the siren on to warn other drivers of his presence, March's driving leaves a lot to be desired, and I find myself having second thoughts about being in a car with him behind the wheel. His warning about cuffing me makes me wary of saying anything too quickly, though, because it has brought to my attention an important fact: he hasn't searched me, doesn't appear to know that I'm carrying a detonator, and probably doesn't know about the ultimatum I'm facing. It's not much of a surprise, given that the Joker only filmed the video for it about an hour ago and I imagine there's some kind of processing that needs to be done before it's ready for the news, but I'd almost forgotten about it myself in all the excitement.

Now that I remember it, the detonator feels like an ember in my pocket, burning away against my leg. I consider telling him about it—and almost immediately ax the idea. I don't know how he'll react, and I don't trust him with the responsibility of the secret. (I might not be the most responsible person, either, but the Joker gave it to _me_ so it's _mine_ and I get to decide what to do with it; everyone else is just going to have to deal.)

Now that I've reached the decision to conceal the detonator from him, I'm pretty eager to avoid giving him cause to search me, so I'm careful to announce, "I'm going to put my seatbelt on," and wait for him to give me a wary nod before I move.

As I pull the belt across my chest, I fight the near-irresistible urge to reach into my other pocket, the one the Joker slipped something into just before shoving me away. I'm dying to know what he stashed on me—from the feel and weight of it, my best guess is a phone—but if I pull it out now, March will definitely take it, and I'm pretty sure that would defeat the purpose. I can't even risk reaching into my pocket to see if I can figure out what it is by feel, because that means betraying to him that this dress has pockets and will definitely make him curious about their contents. Until I'm confident I can figure it out without March noticing, the Joker's secret will have to wait.

Once my seatbelt is secure and I feel less like I'm about to die in a fiery and painful accident, I take a better look at March. He seems a little… not okay. He keeps coughing periodically, in that quiet closed-mouth way that I take to mean he doesn't want me to notice, he's got a burst blood vessel in his right eye, and his skin looks yellow to me. I can't be sure, but I think he's wearing the same clothes he was wearing two days ago when we met.

"Sooo," I start, and okay, that beginning is a little too casual, I blame it on the alcohol and move on: "Have you been to the hospital since the attack, or…?"

He looks suspiciously at me out of the corner of his eye. "Why?"

"Don't take this the wrong way. You look like microwaved garbage."

He snorts. "So do you."

" _I_ am allowed to look bad," I tell him loftily. "The Joker has been dragging me around the city all day, _and_ I'm drunk."

"Wait—you're _drunk_?" he asks, incredulous.

I wince. I hadn't meant to let that slip. "Ehh," I say vaguely, though the damage has already been done, wiggling a hand back and forth in front of my face and squinting one eye. " _Buzzed_ is probably more accurate, but y'know."

"Perfect," he says bitterly. "How'm I supposed to know this isn't just some wild goose chase you cooked up as a drunken prank?"

"What am I, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Not everybody turns into a pathological liar just cause they had some alcohol."

"You'd be surprised."

I stare at him for a confused second before realizing. "Oh, right, the… cop thing. I guess your study sample _would_ be skewed. _No,_ I don't have the Joker's shitty sense of humor and I'm not trying to trick you. I want Gordon safe and sound as much as you do."

"I doubt that." He takes a turn around the corner that has me bracing against the door so I don't crack my head against the window, nearly clipping another car on the way, and as he straightens out, he asks, "You see him?"

"Who? Gordon?" He makes an affirmative noise, and I say, "Yes. He's beat to shit. Good call on calling EMTs to the scene; he'll need them. The Joker or someone smashed his ankle up really badly." I'm irritated to find my eyes welling up as soon as I tell him this. I'm not even _thinking_ about it that deeply, certainly not on a level that warrants _tears_ , but here they are.

It's too much to hope that March doesn't notice, or that he'll just let it pass without comment. "Are you _crying?_ " he asks skeptically, glancing rapidly from me to the road and back again.

"Yep, I'm gonna need you to shut up about it," I say, trying my best to speak clearly past the thickness in my throat as I dab quickly at the corner of my eyes with my fingertips. "I get weepy when I drink; it is _not_ a big deal."

He's almost sneering in disapproval, but he doesn't say anything else on the topic, just asks, "How bad _is_ Gordon? Can a medic on site stabilize him, or are we talking an airlift to the hospital?"

I take a second to calm myself before trying to answer, breathing deep. "I don't think he's actively _dying_ ," I say in time, my voice a little stronger now.

"You don't _think_?" March is impatient for a detective, doesn't seem willing to let people talk and dig themselves into holes—he wants answers _now_ , damn it. I can relate, but it seems like a trait that'll cause him trouble in his designated career path.

"I don't _know_ ," I say, my voice lifting a little in frustration, both in response to his impatience and because I'm annoyed by the holes in my own knowledge. "He wasn't in a _terrible_ state when I got there, he was good, he was talking, and then the Joker jammed a syringe of some random sedative into his neck and I don't know what that did to him. He could just wake up a few hours later with a hangover, or he could… not wake up." I don't think the Joker would _intentionally_ kill him before the deal he offered me expires, but again, he's the kind of guy that thinks deadly mistakes are hilarious.

March doesn't appear to have anything to say to that, though his mouth tightens into a frown. Watching him, I realize something. "Hey," I accuse, "you changed the subject. Why haven't you gone to the hospital?"

"Because I know what your boyfriend does to hospitals."

"He's not my boyfriend, and that's not a real answer," I say, ticking my points off on my fingers. "You think collapsing from massive internal damage is going to help Gordon?"

"It hasn't happened yet."

"Seriously, you didn't even get _checked out_? I heard on the news that a few people _died_ from that gas."

He seems distracted by his mirrors, enough to actually give me an answer: "A medic looked me over. It's not _comfortable,_ but I should be fine, thanks for the concern." Although the words are sarcastic, the bite I'm starting to expect from him is gone. I shoot him a quick, frowning look, heavy with the unspoken question: _what's going on?_ It takes him a second to notice because his eyes are glued to his rearview mirror, and once he does, he just asks abruptly, "Is that SUV following us?"

I turn to look and spot the vehicle he's referring to almost immediately, because unlike the other cars nearby, which have timidly slowed (if not outright pulled over) at the sound of the siren, this one is traveling along at a steady clip in our wake. It's a beefy black Escalade, and any hope I might entertain that it's just a daredevil motorist risking a ticket by taking advantage of the briefly-cleared streets vanishes when I see that the windows are tinted so dark I can't see who's inside.

"Shit," I hiss.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," March mutters, and takes a hard right that slings me practically up against his shoulder despite my seat belt. I crane my neck to look behind us right as the Escalade screams around the corner, speeding up now that its driver realizes that it's been made.

I swear again, settling back into my seat. "It's not one of the force's cars?"

"Yeah, I'm just driving like this because I'm in a hurry."

"You don't have to be a little _shit_ about it."

"You don't recognize the vehicle?"

"No," I admit reluctantly.

" _No_ idea who might be driving?"

"Oh, I've got a _ton_ of ideas. Could be the Joker himself— _shit_ —" I spit as he twists the wheel again to take us without warning through an alley, sideswiping a dumpster on the way—"he could've lost your people, traded off cars, and caught up to us, it's certainly in his playbook. More likely it's just some of his goons. Could even be Victor Zsasz, he wasn't happy with me last time I checked. Spin the goddamn wheel, why don't you."

March's Evil Knievel maneuver failed to lose our tail—the Escalade is bigger and less agile, but its driver doesn't appear to care that it's getting banged up in the pursuit. Watching it through the side mirror, I exhale through my nose, annoyed, and start to take my seatbelt off. " _Fine_. Pull over long enough to let me jump out."

"Put that back on," March snaps.

"There's like a ninety percent chance they're following for _me_ ," I argue. "Drop me off, they'll stop following you, and you can focus on finding Gordon."

"You are _out of your mind_ if you think that's going to happen," he says.

"Look, I'm _not trying to escape_ , this is the _same_ deal as what happened at the station! He's going to take me either way; you need to pick the choice that doesn't end with you—"

"We _don't know_ who's in that car, I am _not_ pulling over, and you need to put your seatbelt back on before I sling you out of a window."

"I strongly object to this decision," I tell him, just so he knows, but if he isn't slowing down, then I think it's best to obey him, so I put the seatbelt back on.

"Noted," he says, and takes another sharp turn.

The next minute or so is… well. I find myself thinking longingly of that time the Joker and I fled the police last Christmas—not that the Joker is somehow a better driver than March, but even then, I had faith in his commitment to keeping _himself_ , at least, alive. _March_ is the one who doesn't seem to have a real sense of self-preservation, so his driving makes me a _lot_ more nervous. I glance over at him, wondering if I can persuade him to give me a gun so I can try to shoot the driver and end this chase early.

_Nah, there's not a chance_. I don't think he's the kind of guy would cry over a murderer shot and killed with no trial, but since he doesn't know who's driving the car, he won't give me carte blanche to fire into it. Besides, there's no _way_ he trusts me with a gun.

We lurch through an intersection, and I take a moment to be grateful for the fact that—the recent incident notwithstanding—I have a pretty strong stomach. Otherwise, with a belly full of champagne, I'd be in for a bad time right about now.

Eventually, and kind of miraculously, March manages to lose the Escalade, though it puts us off-course, an inconvenience he responds to by driving even faster, though a _little_ less erratically. He catches me side-eyeing him after he flies through the third red light without, in my opinion, taking appropriate precautions, and snaps, " _What?_ "

I have no intention of letting his bad mood make me all shrinking and meek—if it only _rarely_ works for the Joker, it sure as hell isn't going to work for this guy. I just say, "Again, you're not going to be much good to Gordon if you _die_ before you reach him. Maybe take ten off her there?" I add, glancing pointedly at the speedometer.

"Shut up," he says, not bothering to lessen his speed.

"You're so charming. Are you single?"

"I swear to god, I will cuff you."

"I'll take that as a yes, and also I call bullshit, because you'd probably have to slow down and take one hand off the wheel to cuff me. That doesn't seem very like you."

His eyes narrow and his frown deepens, but he seems to finally catch on to the fact that snapping back at me is just feeding the flame. I've been in training for this shit for _years_ now, taught by the Joker that shutting up and hunkering down only makes things worse: better to mouth off, quibble, crack jokes, because at least that way I've got a chance at making him laugh and finding my way to his good side (insofar as that's _possible_ ). It's my second nature in conflict at this point; March and I are just both unlucky that he has no sense of humor to speak of.

He doesn't have to pretend to ignore me for long: he turns another corner and screeches to an abrupt halt when he finds a construction crew and all their equipment blocking our way, though he doesn't quite brake fast enough to avoid hitting the bulldozer with his front bumper. The construction crew starts shouting over at him—not as aggressively as they might if his siren wasn't still going, but they still don't look happy.

"Jesus Christ," snarls March. He lifts a grudging hand, acknowledging the construction workers' complaints, and around this time, his radio goes off:

"0190, do you still have Emma Vane in custody?"

He shoots me a look and answers: "Dispatch, that's an affirmative, we're en-route to Gordon's last known location now."

I can't breathe. I know exactly what this must be about. Sure enough: "Copy that, 0190—March, be advised, GCN is reporting that there she has a detonator to a large bomb somewhere in the city in her possession."

March's eyes seek mine, and I look back at him, ready to protest and argue, _you don't understand_ , but my eye is quickly drawn by something just past him: the Escalade, barreling straight towards us on the driver's side.

"Watch OUT—"

My words are drowned by the sound of crunching metal, and the world spins. My seatbelt cuts into my shoulder as it holds me back, something's booming, metal is screeching—

—I think I went out for a second there, because things were moving and now they're still, and I can't hear much beyond the tinkle of broken glass falling to the pavement. I'm still upright, and—I think—not hurt, and I pull in a breath, turning to see that March's side airbags have deployed and… I can't tell if he's all right. His eyes are closed, he's slumped over the steering wheel, and he doesn't look too torn up, but then, I can't see the bad side, the side that would have taken the brunt of the impact.

"Detective?" I say, trying to straddle the line between too quiet and too loud. "March? Are you okay?"

He coughs—no blood—and stirs just a little bit, though he appears to still be fighting unconsciousness, and I breathe a sigh of relief before someone yanks my door open, and I turn to see Victor Zsasz in all his ugly glory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... probably should have said this chapter contains _two reunions_. Hindsight's 20/20.
> 
> Next up: Victor's here to destroy everything. It's very not-cool of him.


	12. Chapter 12

" _No_ ," I say, and I take a swing at his head as he goes for my seatbelt. The blow connects, making him rear back, and frantically, I think, _gun, March has a gun_ , twisting in my seat and making a frantic grab for March, but a big hand grabs my shoulder, yanking me back, then the world flashes white as I take a backhand across the face. I cut the inside of my cheek on my teeth, and the blow on top of the car crash is enough to get my head spinning again, so I find that my efforts to fend him off are reduced to weak flailing that he has no problem dodging or restraining. By the time my eyes and brain are working properly again, he's got the belt unbuckled and is yanking me from the seat.

"NO," I scream, and shamelessly, I deadweight him. I don't have to _beat_ him, or even properly escape—this is a street full of people, cops can't be far behind, I just have to stall him long enough that he has to let me go.

He's got size and strength on his side, though, and just lifts me up over his shoulder. I get one good kick in before he pins my legs to his torso and I'm basically immobile, though I don't stop trying to wiggle my way off his shoulder (to no avail). I think about screaming for help, but as someone who's been in this position a good many times, I've come to realize that doing that only condemns any would-be good Samaritans who try.

Speaking of which, I hear a male voice, just behind me and just in front of Victor. "What the fuck do you think you're doing, bro? You can't—"

Victor grunts, I hear the wet tearing sound I've come to understand goes along with a stabbing, and the man's voice cuts off abruptly. Victor barely breaks his stride.

Then I'm being tossed into the Escalade, into the driver's side, and before I can run, Victor grabs my arm again, following me into the vehicle—I clamber across the seat as best I can with only one hand at my disposal to avoid being squished. Awkwardly, he twists the key in the ignition with his spare hand, and I hope for engine failure, but the Escalade is made of much sturdier stuff than March's unmarked little car—it purrs to life as if it _hasn't_ just rammed somebody. Victor throws the car in reverse, away from the wreckage, then accelerates down the nearest side street.

"Let me _go_ ," I order, though I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed, and I yank at my wrist. He responds by tightening his grip so much that I think I can hear the bones grind together—I definitely _see_ the flash of pain, an arc of white across my vision, and I'm pretty sure the blood drains from my face, too. This guy is a lot fucking stronger than I had occasion to realize at the farmhouse, and his point is clear: unless I want to go through all this with a broken wrist, I'll quit fighting him.

I let my arm go slack, and accordingly, he loosens his grip—he's still holding tightly enough that he could fuck me up if I tried anything, but it's loose enough that I'm no longer in excruciating pain. Very carefully, not wanting to invite more retaliation, I flex my fingers, and I'm relieved to find that they still move when I ask them to. Not a break, then, probably, but now I have no doubt that he can snap my arm like a dried branch if he really wants to.

It cools my powerful _fight_ impulse. I find myself trying to catch my breath, taking a look at him, seeing if there's any smarter way to play this.

The bruise I gave him when I slammed his head down on the radiator is flowering nicely into a deep shade of violet, covering the front quarter of his scalp, the livid red point of impact located directly in its center. I'm sure the leg I stabbed is in no better shape, especially since he can't exactly go to the hospital, but his pants show no sign of blood. I try to remember if he was limping, but I was so caught up with everything else that was going on that I didn't really notice if it was giving him much trouble. Still, it's only been two days, it's got to be barely healed.

It occurs to me that the stab wound would make a good last resort. If it comes to it, I can poke or kick or punch the injury, maybe distract him long enough to let me make a run for it.

In the meantime, the catalog of his injuries is just reminding me that he has an extremely good reason to be furious with me. I slowly lift my eyes to his face, and though he's focused on his driving, taking us on a more erratic path even than March had, I think he knows, is watching me out of the corner of his eye.

Carefully and quietly, ready to stop at the slightest pressure from his hand, I ask, "How did you find me?"

He's silent for long enough that I don't think he's going to answer. Finally, he says, "Cop."

"Detective March? You were following him?" He nods, just once, and I shake my head, a little confused. "I haven't been with him since I first got arrested. There's no way you could have possibly known he would find me today."

Victor makes a little negative sound. "Cops are always visible. _That_ one hasn't been home or slept properly since the Joker attacked his station. Figured if _anyone_ was gonna find you, he'd be first in line."

Joker _had_ told me that Victor was playing dumb practically his entire time at the farmhouse, but, as always when the Joker's telling the truth, it was hard to believe. I'm seeing it now, though, that sort of cool thoughtfulness that I'd seen in Victor the final morning at the farmhouse. It's jarring, but the intelligence he keeps buried away from the average folk explains how he could track a cop all this time, and more than that: how he could successfully reason his way into picking the _best_ cop to follow.

"If you've been watching him this whole time," I say softly, "then you haven't slept either, have you?" He doesn't answer, just glances over at me and gives me a tiny smile that chills me to the bone, because there's nothing _good_ in a smile like that. I notice now how ashen his skin looks, how deep the bags under his eyes have grown.

This guy is unhinged on a _good_ day, and now he's at probably double his usual levels of instability, because he's had no rest and he's full of holes. I'm not liking my chances.

Trying to use that instability to my advantage—maybe I can sway him towards a good decision, for once—I say, "Does that mean you haven't gotten any help for all…. _that_?" I glance him over quickly and pointedly. He makes a twitch that could possibly be a shrug. "Victor, you probably need medical care."

"Oh, yeah? And _whose_ fault is that?" he growls through clenched teeth, and his hand tightens on my arm again, though this time a sort of high-pitched whine from me as I flinch back seems sufficient to get him to relax again. After that, he stops talking, and so do I, thinking maybe it'd be wisest to wait and see what he's planning—and maybe for him to let down his guard a bit—before I make another move.

The buzz is gone after the shock of the accident and changing hands so unceremoniously, or at least it's settled into something that feels more like normalcy. I think about the Joker, trying to keep my free hand from drifting to my pocket and drawing Victor's attention, and I wonder what his game is. Of course, on the surface, there's me and Gordon and the bomb, but it has become increasingly evident to me that there's something else going on here, something he doesn't want anyone looking too closely at: _hence_ me and Gordon and the bomb. We're a smokescreen, covering up whatever he's _really_ doing.

_God, I'm tired_. I close my eyes and rest my head against the window, trying to ignore Victor's hand around my wrist, trying to pretend I'm not here at all.

I always seem to get to this point when I've spent too much time around the Joker, to some deep fed-up place where not even the illicit thrill of being around him is worth _having to be around him_ anymore, but this feels… different.

This feels…

He went after Gordon this time, at least in part to cut into me, to make me witness the pain of someone other than strangers (it's selfish, but I don't have room in my heart to feel empathy for every single person in pain who crosses my path, I never have) or bad guys, mob bosses. With the Joker, things move on an ever-escalating loop: we meet, he does horrible shit, we part, we meet again, he does _worse_ shit, we part, and so it goes on, worse every time.

I don't think I can handle much worse than this. My conscience has been under an assault since I first found out about Gordon, the tenuous peace I'd achieved between the two warring sides of myself last winter torn completely to shreds. I still want to be around him, but I find I hate myself for it more than I ever have before.

_I can't keep circling back around to him._

I feel stupid for having taken this long to come to that conclusion, especially since I've known all along that prolonged contact with him does nothing but hurt me.

_I can't keep doing this, but I'm afraid I won't be able to stop._

Victor slams on the brakes, and I look at him, wide-eyed, then out the windshield, convinced that we've run into a police roadblock—there's no way we've been driving long enough to get anywhere he wants to go. I don't see anything in the way, though, just empty street, and then he's opening the door and dragging me out after him.

"Watch it," I snap, but he ignores me, hauling me along down a set of concrete steps below street level, pushing his way through an anonymous gray door. I realize we've entered a maintenance area for the sewer system, and my feet start to get a little heavier now as the realization sets in that wherever we end up, it's going to be _far_ from the eyes of the public.

My slower pace just makes Victor more impatient, and he nearly pulls me off my feet before I realize that he'll literally drag me if he has to and pick up the pace again.

Another door leads to the sewers themselves, though I'm sure this isn't the worst of them—the water appears to be running relatively clearly, and there are large concrete walkways on either side of the gutters. Victor walks along one of these, pulling me with him, and it's on the tip of my tongue to ask _you know the Joker didn't mean it literally when he said you had to bed down in the sewers if you had no money, right_ , but my arm still aches a little bit and I decide Victor's not the kind of guy I can get away with smart-mouthing, at least not while he's got me at such a disadvantage.

Instead, I hold my tongue and follow, and after about a quarter-mile, we come to another door. He shoves me into this one, finally letting me go, and follows me inside, shutting the door behind us.

Not good. I whip around immediately, ready to put up some semblance of a fight, but he grips my shoulder with one hand and shoves me face-first into the nearest wall, patting my back and ribs, breasts and stomach with the other hand. I'm struck with a very real feeling of terror at this unknown territory, I try to get my arms underneath me, pushing at the wall with a ferocious "Get your hands _off—_ ", but he just moves his hand from shoulder to head and shoves the side of my face into the wall so hard I can feel my cheek scraping open on the concrete.

I realize as his hands delve into my pockets that he's just searching me, though my relief is short-lived as he lifts the detonator from one pocket and the object the Joker gave me from the other. He squeezes at my boots, making sure there's nothing hidden away in them, then he lets me go.

I immediately turn and put my back to the wall. He's between me and the door, but he's a safe couple of feet away now, so I can glance away from him for long enough to ascertain that we're in another sort of maintenance room, or… locker room, or something. It's pretty big for a glorified broom closet, and keeping an eye on him, I start to edge to the far side of the room, because if there's another way out of here that isn't through the door he's blocking, I want to find it.

He keeps a lazy eye on me, but mostly he seems interested in examining the items he took. The object I haven't had time to inspect but suspected was a phone turns out to be just that, and he flips it open, looking it over for a second before shutting it and sliding it into his pocket. Then he turns his attention to the detonator, and I actually realize for the first time that Victor Zsasz has the detonator to a Joker bomb, and those are possibly the _worst_ hands it could be in.

"Hmm," he muses, turning it this way and that. "What's this?"

"Some bullshit trinket the Joker gave me." It's a bad lie, and Victor smiles at me, the first genuine one I've seen from him since I stabbed him.

"Really? Cause it _looks_ like a detonator."

"Yeah, he's got a sick sense of humor. What's the plan, Victor?"

"The plan?" He repeats innocently, like he's never heard of the concept. I fling an impatient hand out, _yes, the plan, now talk please_ , and he drops the act. "The plan is that you tell me where the Joker is. And then you go free."

I've got a moderately safe bit of distance from him, so I feel okay about saying, "I don't like this plan."

He lifts his eyebrows at me, not bothering to voice his question.

" _First_ of all, I don't know where the Joker _is_ ," I say, earning a scoff from him, which is fair enough—he's only seen us at our weirdest and most friendly state, so it probably doesn't seem likely to him that the Joker would just ditch me to the cops with no clue of where to find him again. (Then again, he _has_ spent more than five minutes with the Joker, so really, he should know that that's actually the _most_ likely outcome.)

"Second, I seem to remember that _your_ idea of free… doesn't really sync up with mine."

_Oh, god_. At the reminder, his eyes start to get that earnest shine again, the one he had when he was trying to convince me that he killed Bethany Miller for her own good, and he actually takes a step forward. I hastily hold up my hands, trying to keep him from moving closer, and say, "Why do you want to find the Joker, anyway?"

He stares at me for a moment before reorienting himself enough to answer. "I owe someone his head."

I furrow my brow, searching my memory, and, lighting upon the rundown of Victor's moves and latest known associates the Joker had given me at the farmhouse, I take a wild guess: "Sal Maroni?"

Victor looks a touch discomfited at the name, which confirms my suspicions more than just about anything he could say. I tip my head back for just a second, worried that if I don't somehow conceal my face then my contempt and frustration will shine through and trigger him to violence. Once I feel fairly sure my expression won't betray me, I look back at him and say, "You know he already knows you two are after him."

Victor, too, has gotten his face under control, but it seems a little _too_ impassive to me, leading me to intuit that no, he _didn't_ know that. "A few days ago, before shit went down at the farmhouse, he told me some stuff. Nothing I could make sense of at the time, but _now_? Now I realize that he suspected you were going to turn on him all along, probably from the second you two escaped together," I continue. "He's on his guard, so the absolute _stupidest_ thing you could do is keep trying to chase him down. He'll flip the script. He always finds a way to do that."

"Let me worry about that, little zombie," Victor says.

"Your funeral. Probably literally."

He tilts his head, lips parting as he regards me thoughtfully. "And yours."

_Ah, right. He still wants to kill me. Shit._

He goes on as I try to unobtrusively look for a weapon: "Is this your phone?"

"… _kind_ of." No flashlights, no hammers, no tools, at least not out in the open. Maybe there are some in the lockers lining one side of the room, but I can't exactly start searching those without drawing his attention.

"What do you mean, _kind of_?"

"I mean it's a burner, my _real_ phone is back at the farmhouse, none of those contacts are mine."

"But you have it so you can make calls if you need to. So you can call him?"

I can't hold back a snort, though I do manage to keep from giving him the look that universally communicates _you're a fucking idiot_. "You just snatched me from police custody, buddy. You really think that he's handed out his contact information so I can fork it over to the first cop to get a little rough with me?"

"I think he wouldn't have broken with you without giving you _some_ way of getting in touch with him." Victor tosses the phone to me, and, not expecting it, I barely manage to catch it before it hits the ground. "So call him."

"I don't know how to say this any more clearly. I don't have—"

"Call him," he interrupts me, "or I flip this switch." He shows me the detonator.

I freeze, staring at it for a moment, then my gaze slides back to meet his. He's looking a little smug now, and I imagine I'm not doing too well at maintaining my poker face, but I try it anyway: "I told you. That's nothing."

"Really? Cause it's funny—I was listening to the police scanner just before I rammed your little cop friend. They said GCN is reporting that you have a detonator to a bomb somewhere in the city."

_Shit. Thanks for nothing, Joker._

My poker face is blasted all to hell. Watching me, Victor laughs softly. "They're right, aren't they? He's got you safeguarding a bomb for him."

"It's a little more complicated than that."

"Doesn't _seem_ complicated. Flip this switch—" he uses his thumb to pop open the plastic casing that's been protecting the switch all day—"and _something_ blows up. You know, I have my problems with the Joker—I'd like to cut off his head, string fishing wire through his eyes and carry it around like that, matter of fact," he adds, almost as an afterthought. "But he certainly has a way with explosives."

"I'll be sure to pass on the compliment," I say mechanically, my eyes glued to the exposed switch.

"Why wait?" He nods at the phone. "Call him."

"Victor," I tell him, hearing the strain in my voice as I fight to keep from lashing out, or worse, crying a little bit: "I would like _nothing_ more than to send you to his location, or him to yours, _just_ to end this weird… rivalry that you two have going on. But I literally _can't_." I flip open the phone, clicking through the contacts—my eyes register Wight's name—and I pause. "Unless…"

"Unless?"

This is a long shot, and it's kind of a shitty thing to do to Wight, but he's at least of a size with Victor, would have a better chance at fighting him off than I do, and my top priority right now is getting that detonator off of Victor. Of course, Victor wants to kill me, but maybe I can talk him into keeping me as some kind of a hostage until he's "killed" the Joker first.

I meet his eyes again. "I see a henchman in here. I _might_ be able to get him to come here to pick me up and take me to the Joker. He'd have a better idea of where to find him than I do." Victor narrows his eyes suspiciously, toying with the detonator as he thinks. It makes me nervous, so I keep talking: "Now, I said _might_ —there's like a fifty-fifty chance he got caught by the cops, too, so if he's in custody, then we're shit out of luck." Unless the other numbers in here belong to henchmen, too, but that seems like a lot of guesswork, and I don't know if Victor's patience will hold.

He's already made the decision. "Do it."

I only hesitate for a second. "Where should I tell him to pick me up?"

"At the intersection of Schiller and Morgan. Northeast of the downtown bridge."

I take a shallow breath, send up a quick prayer, and call Wight.

After a few nerve-racking rings, he picks up. "Yeah, boss."

The breath whooshes out of me in a nervous gust, and then, too fast, I say, "Wight, hi, it's Emma."

I can practically hear his confusion in the pause that follows. After a moment, he says, "Hi, Emma, where's…?"

"We got separated, but he gave me this phone." _His phone_ , I realize, given Wight's greeting, but that thought isn't helpful right now. "I think it was so I could get in touch with one of his people and get back to him."

Wight is quiet for a long moment, and my nerves are shot, so I find myself scrambling to fill the silence: "Did you guys get away? It seemed like you were driving right past the cops."

"We were, but Gumby's a hell of a driver, even in a dirty old clunker like that van. He lost 'em in no time." Wight pauses again, then says, "Where'd you end up?"

"I tangled with the cops a bit, but managed to escape the detective that had me. Idiot didn't cuff me, and I ran and was able to hide in the sewers. I'm right at Schiller and Morgan, do you think you could come get me?"

The silence is shorter this time. "Yeah. We're not too far off. Find somewhere safe to wait. We'll be by in twenty minutes."

"Great," I say, and he hangs up. I breathe a sigh of relief, put the phone back in my pocket, then hold my hand out to Victor. "Detonator."

He's watching me with my _least_ favorite creepy smile on his face, that tiny one that really lights up his dull eyes, and my stomach drops. I knew this was a long shot, that he's not a man to have any sense of honor, but it was the only shot I had.

He says, "I wonder how many people this is meant to hit."

"Victor," I say warily. I'm still pressed back against the wall opposite him, and I think about charging him to try and wrestle the detonator away—but there's a good ten feet between us at least; I can't imagine he won't be able to flip the switch just in the time it takes me to reach him.

"If the Joker designed the bomb, then we're talking dozens, right? Maybe even hundreds."

"Victor," I say, feeling a little desperate, "we had a deal."

He looks me in the eye and says, "Dead girls can't _make_ deals."

Then he flips the switch.

I flinch away at the blinding flash of light, the roar of sound that dulls my already-ringing ears. Something clatters against me, dust or stone, I'm turning my face to the wall in a dumb reflexive attempt to protect myself from—something, from whatever this is, and for one stupid, blind second I think that someone triggered an explosion behind Victor.

Then, slowly, as the bits of blasted concrete fall to the floor and the dust starts to settle, I realize what _actually_ happened.

I'm actually kind of angry at myself for not having thought about it before. It's not like the Joker doesn't pull shit like this _every time_ , although in my defense, he's been whirling me around so fast since he presented me with the ultimatum that I haven't exactly had time to sit down and think it through.

The explosion wasn't too big, as far as explosions go. The door behind where Victor was standing is still intact, though blackened, and the walls are missing a few pieces, but the bomb seemed designed to inflict the most damage on whoever was nearest—on the person who triggered the detonator. Victor's certainly not getting to his feet anytime soon.

I check myself over quickly, making sure I didn't catch a piece of shrapnel that I've been too scared or too busy to notice—I haven't, other than some soot and grime I appear to be untouched—and then, slowly and cautiously, I approach Victor's prone form.

_Just because the detonator-bomb blasted him to the floor doesn't mean he's out for good_ , I warn myself, but as I draw nearer, I realize that yeah, it _does_ mean that. The bomb was apparently powerful enough to blast itself to irrecoverable smithereens, and it took his hand with it. His chest is soaked with blood and coated with soot, and his face is—well, calling it a face is kind of generous at this point; I can't really make out anything I would call a _feature_. If he's breathing, I can't tell.

I don't really care that Victor Zsasz has been killed or permanently maimed, he _more_ than deserves it, but my knees still feel a little weak. That could have so easily been me—and while there's something in me that thinks _I_ would have deserved it, too, if I'd been willing to actually flip that switch and sacrifice a bunch of people, I'm also… well, kind of furious, that's par for the course, but more than that, to my surprise, I feel deeply _sad_.

This just proves what I've already realized: none of this gets any better. He's just going to put me in increasingly worse positions for as long as I let him. _How do I stop myself from letting him?_

Case in point: instead of making plans to run as far and as fast as I can, like any person with half a brain would do in this situation, I'm gingerly picking my way around Victor, trying to get to the door without having to touch him. The pickup with Wight should still be on, and I'm going to make that meeting—because I want to find out what's going on with Gordon and whatever else the Joker's doing, true, but also because I've got to talk to him. I have to come to some conclusions, make a decision— _all in or all out_ —and I get the feeling, perhaps entirely wishful and spurious, that it'll be easier to make that decision if I'm with him.

It's probably a bad idea, especially given that I feel suddenly _fragile_. I'm doing it anyway.

I get out of the door without incident, leaving Victor's charred body there, and it's pretty bad when _sewer air_ smells fresher than the smoky, chemical tang of the room I just left. Carefully, I walk back along the concrete walkway, the sound of rushing water growing louder as my hearing starts creeping back.

I make it back aboveground and find a spot where I can keep an eye on the intersection, where I wait for a little while. Wight's not in the same car I saw him in last, but I spot him immediately when he climbs out, as big and recognizable as ever, and I waste no time in approaching him. "Hi," I say, glancing around to make sure no one's watching us too closely.

"Emma," he greets me. He seems surprised to see me, a little, and glances over my shoulder, like he's looking for someone else.

I read between the lines. "Did you think this was a setup?"

"Still kinda do," he says under his breath.

I look at him like he's crazy. "Then why did you _come_?"

"Boss said to."

"Huh. Well. You weren't _totally_ wrong. It was _supposed_ to be a setup, just… the guy _doing_ the setting up wasn't as smart as he thought he was."

"Wasn't?" Wight asks pointedly.

" _Isn't_. I don't know. _Probably_ wasn't." He nods, understanding, and I look past him towards the car. "Take me to him?"

"Yep," he agrees, and opens the door for me. I hop in, trying hard not to think about the fact that this feels like I'm heading to my own execution. I stare unseeing out the window and try not to think much at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this makes a hundred percent of people who didn't listen to Emma when she told them to go to the hospital getting fucked up in an unrelated incident later down the road. Oh, well. Bye, Victor! Serves you right for hearing "bomb" and "Joker" in the same sentence and not turning and walking directly away.
> 
> Racing towards a brick wall here, folks. Next: we check back in with the Joker for another taste of his POV and find out what he's up to. He and Emma reunite. As you might expect, it's not pretty.


	13. Chapter 13

The Joker doesn't feel _nervous_. That would imply the presence of anxiety in general, and if he _ever_ had such a thing, he purged it long ago. However, he _does_ seem to have a lot of energy that he's venting by pacing around some, and he can't seem to stop checking his watch, actions he attributes to the fact that he's got several operations running at once, and at the moment, he's not able to personally oversee _any_ of them. The heat's on, and right this second, he needs to keep his head down, as loath as he is to actually _do_ it.

Sure, the heat in question is sort of his fault; maybe, _maybe_ going in and killing everyone at the luncheon was a little _loud_ , but his skin was starting to itch with how _easily_ everything was happening. Poking the bear was a compulsion he hadn't quite been able to resist. Besides, it was the quickest and most direct way to get what he wanted.

His men are currently raiding the safe house at the address Sal Maroni's mob lawyer had forked over so easily with a little threat to his life. With some luck, that's where they'll find Maroni hiding—unless, of course, the lawyer had lied (he hadn't; the Joker's good at reading people, and _that_ guy had been _frantic_ to tell the truth, to save his skin), or unless Sal has put two and two together and fled already (the Joker certainly _hopes_ he hasn't; he's put a lot of work misdirecting him and the cops and the whole _city_ with this Gordon-and-Emma business, and in the past Maroni's been pretty dumb when it comes to just about everything, but who knows, he may have wised up in the interim).

It's really only fair to himself that he has two things going at any given time, he gets bored _so_ easily, and this latest had fallen into place so quickly that he'd have been suspicious if he didn't know how people _were_. The visit to a Maroni watering hole last night had turned up a smarter-than-average mob goon, who, after just a little light torture, had given up the name of Maroni's lawyer, who'd handed over the address. The Joker's not going to jerk himself off about it just yet, but if his men manage to nab Maroni, this whole thing will have fallen into place with nearly _disappointing_ ease.

He just has to wait. Waiting's a crucial part of any good plan, and he's very good at it, but he fucking _hates_ it all the same.

Hence the pacing.

He's temporarily taken refuge in a random apartment that belongs to a random employee, waiting to hear word. Maybe forty-five minutes ago, Wight called to say that Emma made contact and that it sounded like she was setting up a trap (the Joker instructed him to _spring_ that trap), then, half an hour ago, he'd called again to say that the trap was taken care of and they were on their way. The Joker didn't press for details, because Emma would doubtless explain everything in her own colorful way, and really, he prefers it that way. He expects them at any time.

He just has to wait.

He left his phone—one of them, anyway, the one he didn't hand over to Emma when that nosy cop derailed their conversation—on the table, and he keeps glancing over at it as he paces back and forth in front of the curtained window, listening for the telltale buzz that should alert him to the news has arrived.

It's warm in the apartment, and he's gotten rid of his coat and jacket for now, cufflinks and tie and gloves discarded, sleeves rolled neatly up to his elbows, collar open. It'll be dusk soon, and he'll dress back up when it's time to go out again, but for now, his usual getup feels stifling. At some point at the hotel someone had spattered blood across his middle, and it's drying now into brown spots speckled across the front of his vest, and they clash something awful, but he decides against changing it. There's an off-chance Maroni will piss himself at the sight of it, and that'd be _hilarious_.

He gets the knock before the buzz, knuckles tapping light against the door. After taking a second to smooth down his vest, he strolls over and looks through the peephole to find Wight and Emma waiting in the hallway outside, and even through the fish-eye view, he can tell that Emma's a little bit worse for wear, all sooty-faced, a scrape on her cheek, her arms crossed tight over her middle like she can fold into herself. _Aww_.

He unhooks the chain and flips the deadbolt and then turns away, returning to the little living room where he's been pacing so diligently for nearly an hour now. He can hear them filing in behind him, and once he reaches the window again, he turns to get a proper look at them.

Wight looks like Wight. Emma has unfolded a little now that she's inside, and that white dress is starting to look a little more brown, maybe, or gray, with dirt and soot smeared across it. It wasn't _that_ bad when they parted company, so she must have had an adventure or two since then. Interesting. Also interesting: she's _furious_.

She's giving him one of his favorite looks: so angry that her stare almost _burns_ , but a little lost, too, like she has no idea what to _do_ with that anger. God, he loves it when she's mad. She's so full of energy, of _possibility_. He can pinch and prod her into almost anything when she's angry.

He's so pleasantly distracted by the thought that he doesn't notice that the 'lost' part of her look has disappeared and she's crossing the room towards him until it's almost too late to do anything when she lashes out at him. He's able to get his chin up, and she's at a disadvantage anyway, short as she is, so although he thinks she was going for his eyes, she only manages to rake sharp nails down his cheek—he can feel the flesh there give way for her, four crooked lines running all the way down to his jaw.

Wight's on it—a second too late, but he makes an effort, at least, coming forward and bodily lifting Emma off her feet. His arms are tight around her stomach, pinning _her_ arms to her sides, and she spits out furious words, "Let me _go_ ," and her eyes don't leave the Joker for a second.

He does her the courtesy of holding her gaze even as he gestures to Wight, patting the air absently, _it's okay_. "Set her down, Wight, it's _all_ right," he says, his voice level—friendly, even.

Wight obeys, and then, reading the room, he takes a hike without needing to be told. The Joker thinks he deserves a raise. (Or a bullet for acting without permission. The Joker will revisit the issue later, see how he feels then.)

He can feel the open air on the cuts on his face, irritating them, making them burn. He can tell from the feel of them that they're not _dripping_ blood, but they _are_ bleeding, and just to check, he delicately touches the knuckle of an index finger to the one that hurts the most. The skin comes away just faintly red. She cut straight through the paint. She must be _really_ mad.

She's still glaring at him, and when he lifts his eyes from the back of his hand back to her, she takes it as an invitation to speak. "How could you fucking _do_ that?" she wants to know.

The Joker may not know everything there is to know about women, and he certainly doesn't always know how to predict Emma, but he _does_ know this: _do not admit to a crime they don't know about_. So, widening his eyes as though he's just a bit confused, he asks politely, "Uh… do _what_?"

"The detonator?" she prompts him, obviously too angry to let him drag things out. "The detonator that _happened_ to be its own bomb? What was the fucking _point_ of that?"

The Joker finds himself in the rare position of being able to say exactly what he thinks, because really, it's the best answer. "Um, there wasn't really a _point_ ," he says deliberately, reaching up and scratching the back of his head, playing sheepish. "I just thought it'd be funny."

"You thought it'd be funny to blow my hands and face off?"

He narrows his eyes. This accusation strikes him as unfairly hypothetical. "You still have _all_ of those things," he points out.

"Yeah, no thanks to you," she snaps, rudely.

He thinks she might be over-reacting a little, but even so, he attempts to soothe her. "Come on, Em—I knew you wouldn't do it."

"No, you didn't!"

"No," he agrees, that conciliatory impulse fading fast. "I didn't." He really, _really_ didn't, and that was what made the idea irresistible. Making the detonator a bomb wouldn't be any fun at all if he knew the outcome, after all—if Emma had detonated it, she'd be too dead to be surprised, and if she'd handed it back and traded a bunch of strangers' lives for Gordon's, it never would have gone off at all. _What a snoozefest_. The fun was in the surprise for _him_ , and this… is a surprise. He squints suspiciously at her and demands, "How'd you know about it, anyway? Somebody _else_ set it off?"

She doesn't know how to respond to that. She's still mad and doesn't want to give him the satisfaction of telling him what he wants to know, but he can see in her eyes that she's also dying to tell him how she found out, if only so she can get back to being a terrible scold.

He laughs. _Whoops_ , really, at the idea. "Someone _did_! Oh, who was it? Was it that boring _cop_ that took you away? No, no, wouldn't have been him—he didn't seem the type to blow up buildings for fun, al _though_ , I guess you never know…"

He never has to wait long for her to get exasperated with his self-indulgent rambling and break her silence. "It was Victor."

That's… a little bit of a surprise, though not a _huge_ one. Still, it's enough to make him raise his eyebrows at her as he mouths the name, disbelieving: "Vicky?"

"I _told_ you he would end up being _my_ problem, and guess what? Guess who showed up and rammed the car I was in?"

This is good. Oh, this is better than he _planned_.

"I guess it's for the best that I believed you, because he _saw_ how scared I was when he got his hands on that detonator, couldn't _resist_ flipping that switch, but Jesus," she says, looking at him with contempt and anger and something else, something he can't quite read yet. "Even if you weren't sure whether I'd do it or not—if I'd been standing five feet closer to him, I'd have been injured; if I'd been standing _next_ to him, I'd have been killed. Do you just not give a shit, or…?"

He takes a step closer to her, furrowing his brow to get a better look, and, suddenly self-conscious, she turns to the side to hide from him, but it's too late, he's already seen. Underneath that fury, she is _hurt_.

She hates letting him see that he's gotten to her, always has, but that pain draws him, like a moth to flame, and now is no exception. He can't _resist_ twisting the knife. He moves closer to her, looking keenly down at her, and says, "What? …what, Em? Did you think, whaat, the rules had changed? That I'd play with a handicap, just for you? If you need special _treatment_ , Em, you're, ah… you're not worth playing with."

She's still avoiding his gaze. His eyes rove over her profile, seeing an angry red mark along her jaw where someone—Victor—hit her, and that partially spurs him into saying what he says next: "Fortunately for you—you don't need it. You never have."

He means it as a consolation of sorts, reassurance that she's worthy of his attention, but of _course_ she takes it the wrong way. She rallies herself and turns towards him, glaring. The hurt's still there. He's not sure if she can pull it back right now, even if she tried her hardest. "I _hate_ playing games with you," she spits.

"No, you don't," he counters confidently.

"Yes, I do."

" _Nooo_ , you _don't_. You cannot stay away." To emphasize his point, he gestures expansively at the room around them, _you're_ _ **here**_ _, aren't you?_ To the best of his recollection, he hadn't sent anyone to go _get_ her; she'd sought _him_ out again.

"Don't you think I _know_ that? _Every_ time I'm with you, it gets worse. I can't—"

She breaks off, ducks her head. The Joker, tantalized, frowns, prodding at her: "You can't, what, what? You can't _what_?"

She shakes her head, still staring at the floor, and, losing his patience, the Joker hooks a curled index finger under her chin, pushing her head back up so she's facing him, though it takes her a second longer to drag her eyes to meet his again. Not crying, not yet, though she has been firing up the waterworks a little faster these days—he attributes it to tiredness; she's out of her routine and has been for nearly a week now, he can't imagine she's getting as much sleep as she's used to. It's probably good for her.

"The more I'm around you," she tries again, "the more I… feel like I _need_ you to be part of my life."

His eyes widen a little. He doesn't really care if she sees. This admission is more than he'd hoped for. Sure, he'd been cultivating her little addiction to him carefully, feeding affection and excitement and violence to her in unrelenting measures, seeing the craving for each grow on her face, but she's such a contrary woman, so resistant that he never really thought she'd _admit_ her reliance on him to _herself_ , let alone to him.

It's cause for celebration, but before he can break out the champagne, she adds, "And that's such an obviously _crazy_ thought that I know for a _fact_ I need to cut you out entirely."

Well, that took a hard left turn—though if the Joker is being honest with himself, it's not _entirely_ unexpected. He frowns a little, drops his hand, and takes a step back to get some space. "That seems unnecessarily harsh," he informs her after a thoughtful moment.

She laughs, a rueful little hiss. "Doesn't it? I'm pretty sure it's the only way I'll be able to pull together some semblance of a life, though—you know, _if_ I'm still alive once all this is over."

That's an excellent point—she's jumping to the conclusion that she'll live through this and needs to plan for her future, which isn't at _all_ a guarantee, but before he can tell her so, she sighs, steps forward, and tilts her face down, pressing the crown of her head against his chest.

He doesn't move. Instinct tells him to turn this around on her, but he recognizes that they're at a delicate point in their relationship, and the wrong move could send her running, and while he's pretty sure he can repair any damage done to the bond she feels to him at this point, it would be time-consuming and require a lot more patience in the _future_ than he has to exert now.

He decides to wait, see where she's going with this, and after a second, he has his answer: she sighs and says, "I could have dated _anyone_."

Well, for starters, she wasn't dating _him_ —he required much more wining and dining before he'd consent to a _label_ —but more importantly…

He leans back, frowning down at the back of her head until she finally looks up at him, and he points out, "You don't _want_ anyone else. You only want _me_."

"That," she says, heaving a labored sigh as she straightens up, "is the unfortunate point."

The anger has drained out of her, although the sadness remains, and she looks tired. The Joker is starting to feel itchy and uncomfortable with her like this, and he thinks it's time to circle back to a previous point. "Ah, well, don't worry about it too much, kid," he tells her, light and casual, hooking an arm around her and pulling her into him, her face pressed unresistingly against his shoulder. "Maybe you won't even live to regret it."

She mutters something into his shoulder that he doesn't quite catch (that ear is still ringing something _fierce_ after the shootout this afternoon). After a second, she says, "Don't make fun of me for this."

"No promises," he says, because if she's asking, it's a near-certainty that he'll use whatever she's about to say as a weapon against her down the line.

She keeps her face hidden, like he'll notice what she says less if he can't see her say it. "I keep thinking— _wishing_ —that you weren't you, and I wasn't me, and… we could have had something as, y'know. _Not_ -us."

That makes so little sense to the Joker that he can't even laugh at her for it, and he's the _king_ of twisting, turning, abstract thought. He frowns at the wall behind her, running a hand absently over the curls at the back of her head, and says, "If we weren't _us_ …" he begins, then pauses and shakes his head. This is _stupid_. "If we weren't us, _this_ wouldn't be _this_ ," he points out, tightening his arm emphatically around her. "And _you_ wouldn't give a shit."

"Yeah. I know. I just wish you—"

She trails off before she can finish the sentence, and usually, the Joker hates it when she talks in starts and stops like this, but this time, he's kind of glad she cut herself off, because he knows what she was about to say, and he's embarrassed _for_ her.

_I just wish you loved me._

The Joker engages in a rare moment of self-reflection. He keeps her held close and he searches himself for feelings of… well, if not love, then _sympathy_ , at least.

He finds none.

Affection, there's plenty of that. Cruelty, much more. Lust? …hmm, on standby, there's too much going on right now to get distracted, but yes, there's a healthy portion of that, too. However, he can't seem to feel sorry that he has so thoroughly derailed her life, and there's not a single generous cell in his body to prompt him to even _pretend_ that he does.

She knows what this is. If she needed special treatment, if she needed him to lie to her so she didn't feel so torn up right now, he wouldn't like her as much as he does. She's tired, though—he thinks that this whole window of weakness is understandable, if not forgivable, so he decides to give her a minute.

He holds her tight, and he lets her rest, and he does not love her.

His phone buzzes, finally—with Emma here providing as a diversion, he didn't notice that it hasn't rung until it does. Unceremoniously, he peels himself away from her and goes to get it, noting distantly that she vanishes to the bathroom as soon as he lets her go.

He answers with a brief "Yes," ready for whoever's on the other end to go ahead and tell him the good stuff.

It's Bruiser. He says "We got him."

The Joker closes his eyes in mute celebration as Bruiser continues: "We caught him trying to leave. He had guards but we cut 'em down. He's bagged and hogtied in the back of a van right now."

"Good. _Good_ ," the Joker says emphatically. He really is just a _phenomenally_ lucky guy. He checks his watch again, sees that it's half-past six, and says, "Meet me at the factory. You should be able to make it by seven; we'll be along shortly after. Be careful, huh? Wouldn't want to get caught this far along."

"No, boss."

" _Good_ job," the Joker says effusively through his teeth, like he's praising a dog, and once Bruiser thanks him, he hangs up the phone and goes to tap on the bathroom door.

"Emma?" he calls when he gets no response. "We've got one more outing before we're done for the night." He hears nothing but running water, and frowns. "Em, you're not slashing your wrists in there, are you?" He's seen her suicidal before, and he doesn't _think_ she's there again right now, weird mopey mood or not, but he's been wrong before.

Just before he starts debating with himself on whether he should break down the door or just leave her, the water cuts off abruptly, and a moment later, she opens the door and comes out, toweling at her face.

He blocks her way, waiting for her to look up—when she does, he sees that she's gotten rid of all the soot and grime she was wearing earlier, though the dress is still a lost cause. "You know," he tells her, "you wash more than anyone I've ever known."

"You know, _you_ could stand to wash a bit more often," she points out.

A laugh escapes him. He hadn't _meant_ to laugh, but she's sounding more like herself now, taking digs when she thinks he won't retaliate, and it just kind of… jumped out of him. He turns to the side to let her pass, inclining his head. "Time to go."

She hasn't been plying him with questions as much lately. She just nods and heads to the door, probably assuming (correctly) that she'll find out _where_ they're going soon enough. He takes a moment to put on his cufflinks and gloves and tie and coat—contemplates for a second covering the new scratches up with more paint, but he kind of likes them, likes the way they feel right now, and decides to leave them alone in the end—and then meets her at the door. "Shall we?" he asks, opening the door and gesturing her through.

"Rock n' roll," she mutters in her perfect deadpan, giving him totally unenthusiastic devil horns, and he laughs again as he follows her.

Wight is waiting outside. "We're going to the factory," the Joker announces, and he nods and turns, preceding them down the stairs. The apartment complex isn't particularly busy, but even if someone does pop out and see them right now, the Joker doesn't give a shit, he's leaving. He takes Emma by the arm and guides her down, down to the street and into the waiting car.

The cops are scouring the city, so he can't risk sitting upright, even though the sun is going down and dark is following close. Long legs folded into the foot well, he plants his head in Emma's lap, and when she doesn't bother putting up a fuss, he makes himself comfortable. She almost seems to be ignoring him, really, and the Joker's fine with that, because if she's ignoring him, she's not prying or nagging or arguing, and besides, from this angle he can see some interesting clusters of freckles on her skin he's never noticed before.

She stares out the window and he watches her and once or twice her mouth twists like she's about to cry, though she doesn't cry. The Joker frowns, tilting his head. This whole thing's really getting to her. _Bummer_. He reaches up with a gloved hand, pokes the corner of her mouth, and she looks down at him and can't help but smile. It fades fast, but things can't be all _that_ dire if she still thinks he's funny.

Eventually, they reach their destination—a factory, _the_ factory, an old baby doll manufacturing plant that closed down in the seventies after struggling along for decades and has been condemned for at least ten years. It's not the most comfortable place for _living_ quarters, but it's a great workshop, roomy and messy and totally isolated among a sea of yet more condemned buildings. Some day they'll get around to tearing them all down and building apartment complexes and rebranding the whole neighborhood to draw hipsters, but for now, a lot of people are still iffy on moving to Gotham, and the city doesn't need the space, so the Joker figures he'll take advantage of the building while he's got it.

Wight puts the car in park, signaling their arrival, and when Emma looks down at the Joker, he grins at her. "Ready, muffin?"

That earns him a look of flat-out disgust, which is _almost_ as good as a laugh. She ignores the endearment the way she usually does (he thinks she must like them a little bit, or she'd have told him to stop by now) and says, "Ready as I'll ever be."

"Good," he says, sitting up abruptly and leaning across her to open her door. She moves as if to climb out, but a contrary little impulse hits him, and without really thinking about it, he catches her by the face, the material of his gloves pressing against her jawbone.

She looks at him then, _really_ looks at him, momentarily startled out of that guarded weariness that's been on display all evening. He watches her for just a moment, charmed as always by that raw defiance she wears when she's with him, and impulsively, he leans forward and presses his paint-smeared, tacky lips to hers.

Her mouth parts a little in surprise; he hears her pull in a tiny gasp like she's afraid, though she doesn't pull away. A more opportunistic man—well, okay, a less _focused_ one—would take advantage, push for more, but the clock is ticking, he has business to attend to, and besides—it's not _that_ sort of a kiss.

When he leans back, she's looking at him, brow furrowed like she's trying to figure out what he meant by it. _That_ won't do at all; when she starts trying to assign _want_ and _purpose_ to the things he does to her she inevitably strays down foolish paths, so he loosens his grip on her face, only to tap her sharply on the cheek with gloved fingers. _Pay attention._

"Let's start the show."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're almost definitely in love with a girl but can't tell her or even yourself because you made the decision that you're going to kill her a long time ago and you refuse to change your mind because you think that would be yielding to weakness and anyway you're not emotionally equipped to deal with love, honestly you don't even recognize it, so you're just gonna stay in denial about it for the rest of your life, clap your hands!
> 
> next up: it all goes to shit. I'm off to drink wine and be mad at the Joker, bye!


	14. Chapter 14

Weirdly enough, the thing that registers with me the most as I climb from the car is the absence of the Joker's head on my thighs, the heat and pressure of it—he's been lying there perfectly happy to just watch me for the last forty-five minutes, and eventually, I guess I got acclimated to it.

I'm not thinking about that strange, chaste kiss he gave me moments ago, because it won't lead me anywhere good or helpful.

We're in a disastrously sketchy-looking block of buildings, and it's near dark. I don't see anyone around. I'm not sure what we're doing here, and I'm a little afraid to ask. Honestly, I think the Joker might have brought me here to kill me off once and for all, and while I'm not particularly thrilled at the idea of dying (and certainly won't go quietly), it _does_ seem like it'd be an apt solution to the quandary I'm facing.

God, I'd almost told the _Joker_ I wished he _loved_ me—this sudden sense of instability has _got_ to go. Of course, I didn't mean it in the hearts and flowers sense, or even in the sense that he likes me more than anybody, pretty much always wants me around. The question in my head was more like: _do you feel as tied to me as I feel to you? Are either of us really capable of breaking this off?_

Fortunately, I managed to shut myself off before speaking it, though I sort of think he knows where I was going with it. Of course I already know the answers he'd give, were he so inclined: _no_ , and _yes_ , respectively. The detonator proved that _he's_ perfectly capable of just snapping the cord tying us together without a second thought, and of _course_ he doesn't feel bonded to me, he has no problem dropping me like an old toy and not picking me up again till the mood strikes him. I think I'd have a bit more trouble staying away if our roles were reversed.

This is all excellent evidence in favor of my realization that I have to find some way to stop this, for good, though the thought makes me kind of want to cry (and to make things worse, the Joker _saw_ that and poked my mouth to make me smile instead, and it worked, and he's terrible, but I don't want to say goodbye to him).

This isn't the time to think about this. Something's going down and I need to pay attention. The Joker passes me, heading towards the nearest building, and I make an attempt to clean my thoughts up and follow him, Wight ambling cautiously along in the rear.

The place is some kind of plant, or factory, maybe. We pass through what used to be a lobby, and it's not till we reach what used to be the main floor that I really start putting things together.

Utility lights hang from the rafters, construction cords running down to the generators that fill the huge room with a low hum. There must be a dozen clowns here, maybe just under that, all with their masks on, and I try not to flinch back at the sight—last time I was in a big space like this with questionable light and clowns lurking in the shadows, one of them tried to fucking rape me, and even after two years, that sort of thing doesn't really fade.

They had been milling about, smoking cigarettes and shooting the shit, but as they notice their boss approaching, they all quickly draw to the edges, clearing the floor. I'm following in the Joker's wake, sticking close but not too close in case this is about to take a nasty turn, and I glance past him to see a man tied to a chair in the center of the room.

The man is disheveled, with medium-length silver hair spilling over his dirty, sweaty forehead, and there's duct tape over his mouth. I frown, because he looks familiar, and take a step out from behind the Joker's back to get a better look. It all hits then.

_That's Salvadore Maroni_ , I realize. He's one of those "suspicious figures" that everyone knows is dirty as hell, and so he's frequently on the news, whether because he's had another case dropped or dismissed or because he's hosting another charity event in a half-assed effort to clean up his image. More notably to me, he apparently recently tried to get Victor Zsasz to kill the Joker.

_Bad move._

"Sally, Sally, Sally," the Joker chants, moving closer to his victim. He appears to take an inappropriate amount of delight in ripping the duct tape from Maroni's mouth, then makes a bit of a show of trying fruitlessly to shake it off when the edge sticks to his glove. After a second or two, he tires of this, snatches it away and sticks it to Maroni's shirt, then he turns to gesture at one of his men. The clown jumps to bring him a folding chair, and the Joker sets it down across from Maroni, dusting the seat off before sitting down.

There's a beat of silence between the two men. The Joker is radiating smugness, while Maroni seems… mulish, angry, which strikes me as an unwise approach to take when you're two seconds away from a bullet in the head, but hell, what do I know?

"How's it going, Sal?" the Joker asks, brushing imaginary lint off his shoulder.

"You're making a huge mistake," Maroni says by way of an answer, and I have to take a second to close my eyes, because _holy shit_ , I can tell I'm right about this guy.

The Joker's back is to me, so I just see him tilt his head. "Really? How's that?"

"You kill me, and you start a war."

The Joker laughs in his face—hell, he _howls_ , and as it tapers off, he struggles to get out his next words: "You think… your men are gonna go to war, with _me_ , for—for the sake of a _dead_ man?"

Maroni's lip is hitched in a sneer of outright repulsion. It sounds like it costs him to grind out, "I'm the stability people in our line of work _depend_ on. You off me, and you're shooting yourself in the foot."

"You mean like what happened when I killed Gambol?" suggests the Joker. "Or the Chechen? He was your friend, right? What was his name, again?"

Maroni ignores the barb. "I consolidated their power," he says.

"Movsar? Movlid?" muses the Joker, apparently not listening.

"I forged connections with the police, the judges—I stabilized this town after you nearly ripped it to shreds the _last_ time. Do away with me, and it all collapses. The cops will close in and rout whoever's left."

"You're saying this like it's supposed to be some kind of _deterrent_ to me," the Joker says. "Anyway—consolidated—you consolidated _their_ power, what makes you think I won't just…. absorb yours? Hm? Big fish eats the little ones."

Maroni gives the Joker a look of pure disgust. "My men will never work for you," he says, and coughs. When he recovers from the brief attack, I see the shine of blood on his lip.

The Joker rises and courteously dabs at his mouth with a handkerchief—Maroni tries to jerk back, but he's only got so much wiggle room. After a moment, the Joker tucks the handkerchief into a pocket, but remains standing to address his enemy. "Uh, Sal—that's a nice sentiment, and all, but men abandon their principles _pre_ -tty quick when they've got mouths to feed—especially if the mouth is just their _own_. We're _practical_ men, you and I, hmm? We know this."

"You wanna be hunted twice as bad as you are right now?" Maroni asks, steely, looking directly into the Joker's face. "You keep knocking out competition, the law won't have much else to distract them from _you_. Big fish? You'll be the only fish _left_. They'll be tripping all over themselves to catch you."

The Joker snaps his fingers, the sound jarringly loud despite his gloves. "Mikhail!" he declares. " _That_ was his name."

Maroni slumps a little bit, like this discussion is taking it out of him. I can relate, I know _exactly_ how exhausting it is to talk to the Joker for longer than about five seconds at a time, but given the blood, I think it's likely he was also worked over pretty badly by the clowns before we got here.

The Joker crouches slightly in front of him, twisting his head around nearly upside down at Maroni's eye level so the mob boss has to either look at him or actively _avoid_ looking at him. Given his performance as _stubborn tough guy_ thus far, it's no surprise that he picks the former.

Quietly, the Joker says, "You see, _I_ happen to believe that misfortune, er, _challenges_? They make you strong-er. If— _if_ —you've somehow been, uh, 'shielding' me from the heat—" he actually uses air quotes—"then, why, it's imperative that I get rid of you. You know? For my growth as a person."

Maroni glowers at him for a moment. The Joker doesn't move, and neither man speaks, and right before the standoff is about to get comical, Maroni breaks eye contact and nods over at me. "Why is _she_ here?"

At that, the Joker straightens up and moves backward a few steps, gesturing roughly in my direction. "Em? _Well_. Since she's been doing the hard work of providing the GCPD, GCN, and the GP with a nice distraction while I was busy tracking you down, I figured she should get a front row seat to the end result. It's only fair, don't you think?"

Maroni looks at me. I don't think it's fair that going just by his face, he seems to hate me every bit as much as he hates the Joker. "You get your pet Commissioner back yet?" he asks.

"You know, no matter what he tells you, I'm not a part of… whatever this is," I say, gesturing vaguely towards the two of them. "Leave me out of it."

"You won't," Maroni continues, like I hadn't spoken at all. "He's not in the business of giving people what they want. Commissioner Gordon will be dead by the end of this. Mark my words."

The Joker steps in front of him, calling his attention back. "I _think_ … you might be confused, there, Sally," he says, waving a hand, and I flinch as a masked henchman brushes past me on his way to hand the Joker a knife. "The only guaranteed death at the end of this? It's yours."

Maroni's tough demeanor is unwavering. He looks up at the Joker and says, "I'm injured. Those goons of yours—they ruptured my kidneys, feels like. Cut me loose, huh? At _least_ fight me like a man."

" _Hmm_ ," the Joker says, high pitched and thoughtful, "no."

He kicks the chair back and pounces, following Maroni to the floor, and I'm behind them by several feet with no desire to intervene, so I _hear_ more than see what follows—Maroni screaming, deep and guttural, the Joker laughing hysterically, the flash of the knife as it darts in and out, and it seems to take a long time before the screaming stops.

Unable to wait it out, I finally turn away to avoid the sight that'll meet me when he's done. Sal Maroni is another man whose death I won't mourn—he's led a brutal faction of the mob for years, doesn't care who he's hurt, doesn't care about the damage he's done in pursuit of his wealth and power—but I'm a little surprised to find that I wish I _could_.

Even before I met the Joker, I had a rather pragmatic (someone uncharitable would say _cold_ ) view of life and death. My stance was simple: _people die, caring hurts the carer, don't force attachments to the dead because you think it's respectful, it'll take things from you_. That stance has helped me throughout my encounters with the Joker, though it far from numbs me entirely, and I've been pushing empathy increasingly further away, an action necessary if I want to keep in step with him, but now… for the first time, I find myself wishing I cared more. Not just about Maroni: about everyone.

It's certainly not something I'll learn to do as long as I'm with _him_.

The ugly cutting noises, the screaming—they've stopped. I glance warily over to see the Joker standing up. Maroni's chair is still tipped over, his body puddled against the floor, and I can no longer see the smug face or the color of his hair. The Joker turns, and the whole front of him is riddled with blood, from the hem of his pants all the way up to his painted face.

His eyes, predictably, seek me out, and when he finds me, he gives me a ghastly grin—a stream of bloodied saliva pours from his lower lip. "Lookin' a little _pale_ there, Emma," he says, and extends his hands out, the knife a shiny red beacon in one. "Does somebody need a hug?"

It's a horrifying sight, the question is nearly a threat, and if I didn't recognize it as probably _designed_ to freak me out, I'd probably have more trouble digesting it. As it is, he's not charging me, and I lift a hand like I can ward him off, giving him a quick, disgusted look out of the corners of my eyes. He lowers his hands as if he's disappointed by my reaction.

I announce "I need some air," and walk away. He lets me.

Behind me, I hear him barking out a few orders, instructing his men on how they're supposed to get rid of the body. I just find the nearest wall and follow it until I eventually read a door marked _Roof Access,_ and I go through it, climbing up until I emerge into the city air.

It's actually a gorgeous night. The moon is swollen and low over the harbor; it's crisp outside and smells like burning leaves. The roof is a bit of a mess, with old storage drums and debris lying around, and there's a spot that looks like it was under construction when the building was abandoned—time has eroded the hole in it further, and chunks of concrete and brick lie around, making me feel like it's probably not that stable, but my side of the roof looks okay, so I stick to it.

"Now would be a good time for you to swoop down and do your thing," I announce to the black night. There's no response, even after I give it a minute, and I sigh. "Long shot, anyway."

Not much later, the door opens behind me. I hear his familiar shuffling tread against the concrete, and before it gets too close, it stops and he speaks. "Pouting?"

He's got a really weird idea about my attitude vis-à-vis him killing people who are themselves responsible for people being killed. Again, I've never shed many tears for them. I don't point this out, though, deciding it's best at the moment to keep things simple. "Just taking in the fresh air."

"Uh." A few more footsteps, drawing closer to me. "It's Gotham City."

I smile—it might be the last time I get the chance, with him, at least—and look back at him. He's cleaned up a little bit, the coat and vest gone, his tie on but loose, and he found something to wipe his face with, because the blood is gone, along with a few chunks of paint. I appreciate that he's at least not parading around _completely_ coated in Maroni's blood.

When he realizes I've got nothing to say to that, he falls into place right beside me and sniffs against the chilly night air. "Well, it's for the best, isn't it? This is the best place to see the fireworks."

Just like that, there's a familiar sinking feeling in my stomach. I try to ignore it, asking him with a false lightness in my tone: "Fireworks?"

He looks slyly sideways at me, which doesn't make me feel much better. "See," he says, after drawing a quick breath, "because you saw fit to tip off the cops about the Commissioner's location, I wasn't able to get there in time. Well, actually," he amends, "I didn't _try_ to get there—I called my guys on scene, you remember them? And told them to move him somewhere, anywhere, just get him out, and fast. The first police to arrive? They found my boys out cold, bound with cables, ol' Jim nowhere to be seen. Given our, uh, _mutual friend's_ tendency to eavesdrop, I think it's obvious what happened, don't you?"

"Where is he now?" I demand. "Do you know?"

He screws his eyes shut to signal his distaste with this line of questioning, shaking his head. "Not the point. The _point_ is that in… handing over the tip that eventually _saved_ Gordon, you made your choice."

I frown. "The detonator was… fake; the only bomb it triggered was itself."

"The _detonator_ was fake," he says, and pulls something out of a back pocket. "The _bomb_ was not."

It looks like a control to an RC car like the kind I used to play with back when I was a kid, complete with a two foot long antenna, which the Joker expands with relish. There's a big, glowing red button on the side. I stare at it, then turn my horrified eyes to the Joker.

"I'm very careful with my words," he says, unbearably smug, trying to cloak it in earnestness and doing a bad job. "I said there was _a_ bomb that would affect a lot of people. I gave you _a_ detonator. Now, I never said they matched up."

"You can't—" I start, reaching for this new detonator, but he simultaneously lifts it well out of my reach and presses his fingers to my collarbone, shoving me back with insultingly little effort.

"Ah, ah ah—yes. Yes, I can." He pauses, cocks his head, and adds, "And I _should_ , probably, soon." I can hear what he hears: sirens in the distance. I'm not sure if they're coming for us or not, but it seems wise of him to err on the side of caution.

I meet the Joker's eyes again. They're shining, beetle black, remarkably satisfied. This has been a good night for him. I try a line of argument that's never worked: "You didn't tell me everything. This is _not_ fair."

"Fair, fair, fair," he mutters to himself, rolling his head along his neck impatiently before turning on me. " _Fair_ is what you can get away with. _Fair_ is what you can _take_. Okay? Stop talking like you think you're _owed_ something, that you'll be _looked after_. You _know_ that isn't true. Now come on," he says, turning away and heading towards the edge of the roof with the best view of the city. "Might as well enjoy the spectacle."

I cast about, lightning-quick, and when I see the hunk of brick just a few feet from me, I scoop it up. I trail behind the Joker, careful not to call his attention by rushing loudly up on him, and once I've got a decent angle, I call out, "Hey."

" _Ughhh_." It's a sound of profound exasperation, and he half-turns to see what I want. That's when I hurl the brick.

I'm aiming for his detonator hand, honestly, but I'm shaken up and my aim is off and I end up hitting him square in the face. He doesn't go down, but he stumbles. He drops the detonator.

I'm on it before he can recover. I scoop it up and race towards the roof edge, closing the antenna as I go.

" _Emma_." It's a horrible tone I've never heard before, a warning to stop before I fuck it all up. Maybe I'm doing more harm than good, maybe when I toss the detonator I'll jar something loose and accidentally trigger the bomb, but with the antenna down… the range must be limited, right? It has to be the safest way to destroy this detonator, to render the bomb useless, at least in the short term. Anyway, I'm _completely_ flooded with adrenaline, and it seems stupid to stop now.

I'm just a few feet from the edge when I hear a loud _crack_ , and someone punches me on the right side of my back—hell, it hurts—but I'm close, and aside from stumbling, I'm undeterred. I slide to a risky stop, a little _too_ close to the edge, and I fling the detonator down, watching as it hurtles twenty, thirty feet and then shatters to a hundred pieces on the pavement.

I don't hear anything particularly explosive-sounding from the city.

_It's good, right? I've stopped it. At least for now._

It's a second or two before I realize that I'm lightheaded again and my knees are weak, and the spot on my back feels… not right.

I look down and see blood blooming across my upper abdomen, staining the already-dirtied white dress, and I realize that what initially felt like "being hit" was actually "being shot."

"Holy shit," I say, and turn to look at him.

He stands a dozen feet away or so, still holding the gun. His teeth are bared, like he's pissy about the detonator ( _really?_ He gives a shit?), but something about his eyes—if I didn't know any better, I'd say _he_ was a little surprised by the current course of events as well.

I need to sit down or I'm gonna fall off the roof. Pressing a hand to my stomach— _ew, god, that got wet fast_ —I get a few steps away from the edge, then half-sit, half-fall to lean against a storage drum that's been resting on its side for years.

The Joker glances around, sucks his teeth with a quick tearing noise that I think signifies his disdain for this whole situation, then holsters the gun as he moseys over. Pulling his pants clear of his shoes, he sits down beside me.

"You shot me," I say.

"I did."

"I didn't think you'd do it."

" _Clearly_." There's something in his tone that communicates a _strong_ amount of blame, which is rich coming from the guy who _shot me_.

Those words seem kind of hard to say right now, so I stick with my original plan: "I mean, you've _stabbed_ me before, but a _bullet_?"

"I have never stabbed you," he says, offended.

"Bull _shit_. Remember after we shot up Falcone's guys?" I have to kind of swing my head to get it turned sideways so I can see him. My energy's evaporating pretty fast, and in my experience, pain _fades_ the longer you live with a wound, but in this case, it keeps _growing_ , which is a bummer.

I can see him thinking. After a moment, he scowls. " _That_ was not a stabbing, that was a _scratch_."

"Potato, po _ta_ to." I shiver. " _Jesus_ , it's cold up here."

The scowl changes into a look I can't exactly read. It seems… like a nicer look than I'm used to from him. Maybe sadder? But that doesn't sound right. Instead of answering me, he puts his arm around my shoulders, and he's so _warm_.

I look at his legs stretched out beside mine, and I press my hand tight to my stomach even though it hurts and I think _this is it. I'm gonna die_. It's not as distressing as I would have thought. Partially because the concept is fuzzy, more or less like everything else right now. I concentrate, trying to figure out how I feel about it. Earlier tonight I was determined to fight it, regardless of how futile the fight would inevitably prove. Now, now that it's happening?

"I'm okay with this, I think." I don't really realize that I said that out loud till the Joker looks sharply at me. I look back at him, seeing the four livid scratches going from his cheekbone to underneath his jaw, and I regret giving them to him. I was furious at the time, but it doesn't seem like it matters much anymore.

It is kind of a shame that I won't get to see him again, though. The paint on his face is patchy, and I can see his real skin through it, and it reminds me of being with him just a few days ago at the farmhouse, when we relaxed with the whole _being enemies_ thing for a day or two. That was good. I reach up, touching a patch of bare skin on his chin.

He grabs my hand—but not hard, not like _fucking Victor_ had earlier—and brings it down to rest against my leg. His hand around mine is warm, so I don't fight.

_Ooh._ Head rush, and _there_ , the pain is finally calming down a little bit. This is probably a bad sign.

Just in case, I look at him again. It occurs to me that I don't actually know jack shit about dying, and whether there's anything after death, and I'm too tired to be scared, but the thought _does_ prompt me to say something else to him.

"I'll be waiting for you."

I intend for it to be teasing, or a taunt, maybe, but it comes out dreamy, almost serene. However it sounds to him, he rejects the sentiment, shaking his head. "No." He leans over me, pressing his lips hard to my clammy forehead, pulling away with a noisy _smack_. "You, me? We'll never see each other again. This is goodbye."

_Well, agree to disagree,_ I think, but I can't quite manage to get the words out. Spots are building up in my vision, darkness, and my head seems suddenly too heavy to hold up, so as I watch the spots grow, I lean against him.

The black closing in on me isn't frightening or cold. It's sleepy, and inviting, and,  
head on his shoulder,

I  
let it in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> update: I have graduated from wine to hard liquor
> 
> I'm not going to make you wait a week for the epilogue. Give me a day or two to put on final touches; it'll be up shortly.


	15. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **me, reading your comments** : I didn't mean to hurt them like this!  
>  **my brother, who knows me extremely well** : you DID.
> 
> Also if you're reading this a little later, this was sort of a double update, so make sure you've read the chapter before this one. Go forth.

I wake up—to a haze of too-bright light and the beeping of monitors, and voices that come in a harsh jumble. I close my eyes, blinking for what feels like only a second, then a strange woman is standing over me, asking me if I can hear her.

My body feels heavy. I nod, dully aware that I'm afraid, that I don't want to speak.

"Miss Vane, you're at St. Raphael's," she says. I can see her face a little clearly now—she's older, in her fifties, maybe, and I still don't recognize her. "I'm Dr. Wentworth. How do you feel?"

That's a good question. Physically, I don't feel too much of anything, but… my head's foggy, and that fear is at home in my chest, and I'm not sure why I'm here. So I ask. "What happened?"

She doesn't bother to refer to the clipboard she's holding. She gives me a little sympathetic smile and reminds me: "You were shot."

_Oh, yeah._ I wait for a second, expecting a flash of pain, a nasty feeling of horror, but it seems that whatever drugs are slowing my brain down are also keeping me relatively numb, aside from that familiar fear. When I don't react, the doctor adds, "And all things considered, you're a very lucky young lady. We couldn't save the kidney, but the damage to your liver was minimal, and the EMTs were able to slow the bleeding until we could patch things up. It could be a while before you're up and about, but you're well out of the woods."

This all seems… _excruciatingly_ unimportant. "Where is he?" I ask.

She hesitates, just for a second, then says, "You don't need to worry about that right now. The most important thing—"

"Fuck _you_ , 'I don't need to worry about that right now,'" I say, and then realize _way_ too late that I'd spoken out loud. She glances over me, forehead furrowed a little, _can you believe this_ , and I decide that I'm in for a penny already and add: "Why won't you just _tell_ me, tell me what _happened_ , I won't… be able to think about anything else until—"

I hear more beeping just over my head, but when I try to turn to look, Wentworth puts her hand on mine. I try to shake it off, but the motion is weak and ineffective—the outburst, small as it was, took it out of me. "You're safe," she says, her eyes and tone so emphatic that it makes my skin itch. "All you need to do now is rest. There'll be time for talk later."

_Bullshit_ , is the only thought I have in response to that, but the room has started to swim, and the lights are brighter now. I have to shut my eyes hard to block them out.

When I open them again, Wentworth is gone, the room is quieter, and I feel a little less hazy. I also feel like someone hoisted one of those thirty-pound concrete blocks over their head and brought it down full-force into my stomach.

"You're awake." The voice is familiar. I turn my head carefully—somehow even _it_ hurts, and it wasn't even shot—and see Gordon in a wheelchair beside my bed, his hurt leg propped up in front of him and a Louis L'Amour novel in his lap. He has glasses on—not the style I'm used to seeing on him, but big ones, with yellowish-clear old-man frames. I love them right away.

"You're a _western_ guy?" I ask, making sure he hears the contempt in my voice.

"What's wrong with westerns?" he asks, his brows rushing down. "They're one of America's greatest art forms."

"Yeah, well, if you needed any more proof that America blows…" I crack a smile then, and he doesn't quite smile back, but his eyes go soft and I can feel the impact of that softness in my chest. I look away again before I can tear up, because right now, I'm certainly _weak_ enough to cry at the drop of a hat.

"Just kidding," I say to the ceiling. "There are some good westerns out there. Broken Trail? Good stuff."

"Glad you've found some that earned your approval," he says. There's a brief silence, stretching out for maybe half a minute, then he says, "Batman found you, and EMTs who arrived on the scene not long after helped stabilize you until they could bring you here."

"I thought it might have been something like that."

"Your location was tipped off by a citizen who thought they saw you in the backseat of a car heading towards the Old Industrial District. Given that your face had been all over the news for the last… thirty-six hours or so, she was pretty confident she recognized you, so the PD sent a few cars to investigate. They… did not expect what they found."

I can't stop myself from looking at him. If he finds my instantaneous curiosity suspicious, he's kind enough to avoid saying so. "Batman caught the Joker," he tells me. "I don't know if it was before or after he secured you. I gather the Joker was still on the scene when he arrived—my guys tell me there wasn't much of a fight."

"The Joker prefers to talk," I say, because if I don't, I'll have to think about the fact that he'd stayed with me long enough to fuck himself over, and that isn't a productive line of thought.

"Believe me," he says, a little steely now, "I know."

_Shit. Selfish ass_. I turn sharply to look at him and say, "What are you even doing out of bed, Commissioner? Jesus, it's a miracle you haven't lost that foot," I say, glaring pointedly at the casted leg propped up in front of him. "You need to be resting."

"I've been resting for over two days now," he says, even more steely. "I'm tired of resting."

"You've gotta be kidding me."

"I've been gathering dust for too long. There's a lot to catch up on, and nobody's letting me work. You're in the same hospital as me, just an elevator ride away—if I don't get to at least check in on you, I am gonna go stir-crazy, and that's a fact." He seems very adamant about this, and I can't help but laugh, though I regret it immediately when it makes my whole torso ache.

"Ahhh," I hiss. "Jeez. This is terrible."

"I'll call the nurse for more medicine."

"No, no—not yet, anyway, it might make me foggy. I can handle it," I assure him at his skeptical look. "How's Detective March? Did he make it?"

Gordon nods slowly. "His leg got pinned pretty bad, but he'll keep it, at least. Hell, if I know him, he'll push through physical therapy and have the full use of it in half the time it'd take the average person."

"Sounds… like what I know of him. Is he in this hospital, too?"

"No—they took him to Gotham New General."

"Thank. _God_ ," I say emphatically. That makes Gordon laugh, but honestly, I don't think I could deal with March rolling into my room to harangue me for eight hours a day. The Joker's bullet hadn't killed me, but _that_ actually might.

"He's… a touch intense at times," Gordon admits. "You should probably know that the department's looking at him for some misconduct with your case. He didn't exactly dot his i's and cross his t's when he arrested you."

"I figured," I say. "Kind of got lost in the hubhub of what happened _after_ , though."

"It did," he agreed. After a moment spent watching me steadily, as if trying to decide to tell me what he's going to tell me, he says, "Victor Zsasz is dead."

"Good." I know it's not very empathic of me, but that guy was terrible, and the world will be better without him.

"We found his car outside of a sewer entry and searched the sewers till we found him."

"I was with him when he blew himself up. You know the detonator the Joker gave me?" Gordon nods, looking a little pained. "Yeah, it was a bomb set to fuck up—I'm sorry— _mess_ up whoever flipped the switch. One of his tricks."

"Lucky you didn't flip it, then," Gordon says, watching me narrowly. He might be angling for some insight, trying to see if I look capable of doing such a thing, and I just look him in the eyes and tell him the truth.

"I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't think you'd want me to sacrifice all those people for you, but… I didn't want to just _give up_ on you, you know? Sentence you to death. I just… I thought if I held onto it long enough, something might happen that took the choice away from me. And lucky me—it did."

"Lucky you," he says, his tone bone-dry. "That reminds me—the DA's office is still deciding whether or not they're going to bring charges against you."

"Lucky… me?" I say again, trying to read his expression and failing.

He shrugs a little. "There's really no denying that you were running around outside the law for at least part of the last couple of days, Emma—but you've got a few reputable witnesses that will testify that your involvement with the Joker was strictly to minimize the casualties he planned to cause. There's me, March probably has a few things to say, and strangers keep popping up, people saying you told them to run, people who saw you with him and say you didn't look like you were there of your own will. If this does go to court… I'm not sure you could get a jury to convict."

"Really depends on which side they've come down on," I say, resting my head back against my pillow as weariness washes over me at the thought. "Before I left the city in the first place, they seemed pretty evenly divided between thinking I was a whore and thinking I was a hero. I can't imagine that's changed much."

Gordon reaches forward and rests his hand against mine, just for a moment. "You need more medicine and more rest," he decides.

"Look who's talking," I shoot back.

"I'll let the nurses know on my way out," he says, slipping his hand from mine and rolling his wheelchair backwards before turning it and coasting from the room.

"Hey, don't let March testify, okay?" I call after him. "I want to try to _not_ get convicted."

I think he chuckles at that, it's hard to tell. The door swings shut behind him. Not long after he leaves, a young blonde nurse arrives to smile and tell me I look better and put something in my IV, and not long after that, I'm drifting again, and gone.

When I wake up next, it's night. There's a man in the visitor's chair beside me. He's wearing a suit and a ski mask.

I jump at the sight of him, my panicked mind providing me with all kinds of possibilities, reasons for his presence, none of them good, but he just leans forward, a finger to his lips, and says, "Shh."

There's something familiar about him, and after frantically looking over his face for a second, it clicks: that mouth, those eyes, the mask, the faint light—I think Batman's here to see me.

I glance nervously to the observation window set in one wall of the room, but the nurse's station seems empty. As if he read my mind, he says, "They're on their rounds. We've got fifteen minutes before they come back."

Yes, the voice confirms it—definitely Batman. I feel a sudden swell of gratitude, not just because he saved my ass ( _again_ ), but because I really wanted to see him again. I have to apologize for the shit I pulled.

The first thing that I'm capable of saying is, "Thank you for saving me again."

He nods a little, but doesn't say anything. I'm feeling guilty already, and his silence compounds that feeling, so I blurt, "I'm sorry for leaving the safe house. _So_ sorry. You were right, you were right—I shouldn't have played his game in the first place but… I didn't think Gordon had a chance if I didn't find the Joker again. I really didn't."

"You shouldn't have left," he agrees, "but because you did, you bought Gordon time. He probably owes his life to you."

"You saved _him_ , too." Shit. The pain medicine has my defenses down again, and I have to blink to keep from crying. " _I_ obviously wasn't getting anywhere. Thank you."

He nods, but I'm not sure he's really absorbing the gratitude. That's fine—if his deal is that he's uncomfortable with thanks, I can understand that, though it probably won't make me stop thanking him.

I'm hesitant to ask the next thing, but he seems to be the person _to_ ask. In the end, my question is just one word: "Joker?"

"In Arkham again." He hesitates, then adds, "He said something like… it was time to take a break."

"Yeah, well. Breakups. They can be hard." I mean it as a joke, but I have to look away from him fast because my throat is getting tight.

Batman leans forward, his elbow resting on the edge of the bed beside me. He seeks my eyes and says, "We don't know that he'll escape again, but it's always a possibility. I'd like to get you out of the city—out of the _country_ , really, before he's out again."

I have too much respect for Batman to look at him like he's a crazy person, but I admit my eyebrows hitch a little bit higher at this. "Umm," I say, when he doesn't follow up by telling me I'm on some hidden camera prank show, "that's… not a terrible idea, but even _if_ I don't get sent to prison, I kind of feel like I'm going to be tied up with court stuff for… at least a year, wouldn't you think?"

"I'll take care of that."

I frown. "Are you gonna buy off a judge? That doesn't really seem like—"

"No."

I wait, but after a moment it's obvious that no explanation is forthcoming. I decide that if anyone is capable of getting me off scot-free without committing a felony to do it, it's probably Batman, and I decide to trust him. Moving to the next thing, I say, "I'm—seriously not _trying_ to be negative, but the truth is I don't really think I can afford to move out of the country. I did all right upstate because of my job and the witness protection stipend, but living internationally, without even a job lined up?"

"I can take care of that, too," he says.

I frown harder, a little suspicious now. "Are you a fairy godmother or something?" He doesn't deign to answer that, and I go on: "It's not that I don't like you, or trust you, it's just that… when people start offering me things with both hands, I start to think there's a catch. Something I have to do, some freaky payment I have to make."

"I think you've paid enough already."

The statement is soft, innocuous, but holy _hell_ does it hit me hard. Even though I know I'm not an innocent in all this, that I deserve at least _some_ of what I got, it's a potent reminder that at least a few people care—that _Batman_ cares, and I feel my face getting twitchy and teary again. I quickly cover my mouth and work to get myself under control, and once I think I can talk without bursting into tears, I slide my hand up to cover my eyes and say, "I… think I need help."

Admitting that sparks a fresh wave of pain, of vulnerability, and I have to wait for it to pass before I can speak again. Batman is patient, saying nothing. The tips of his fingers brush mine, a reminder that he's there.

After fighting back a threatening sob, I go on. "I already told you that there's… something weird with me and the Joker, and it keeps getting worse, and _worse_ , and I'm scared that I'm not strong enough to stay away on my own anymore. Even now, I want to see him again, and at the same time… I know that that's the _worst_ thing I could do. Especially now that he _shot_ me." The spark of outrage at the thought bolsters me, a little bit, at least, makes me feel less like crying, and I bring my hand down from my eyes.

He gives it a moment, then says, "I can take care of it all. You just need to agree."

There's a lot I could say to that—specifically, _who the hell are you and what are your connections that you can just get my charges dropped and fly me out of the States, and are you sure you actually CAN or is this all some big delusion_ —but in the end, he's offering help, and if there's a chance that it'll work, I won't turn up my nose.

I nod. "If you're offering. I… think it could save me."

"Where would you like to go?"

I raise my eyebrows. That's not what I expected him to ask next. "Anywhere?"

"Within reason."

I'm not sure what _that_ means, but… "I'm just gonna warn you, I'm a walking cliché."

"Tell me."

"I've always wanted to try living in the UK."

He smiles. He covers it up really quickly, and it's more a twitch than a smile, but I _fucking_ saw it. He asks, just as gravelly and stoic as ever, "Any place in particular?"

I shrug. "Dealer's choice."

"Noted." He glances past me, towards the beside table. "Who sent you flowers?"

I turn to look, and hell, he's right, there's a whole vase brimming with cyclamen blossoms sitting there. "I don't know," I say. "Let me check—no, don't help me." I maneuver myself over with a groan and look, but there's no card, nothing to indicate who sent them.

"It doesn't say," I say, turning back to him—

—and, of course, he's gone. "Oh, for the love of—you could just say _goodbye_ ," I announce to the empty room, playing the odds that he can somehow still hear me.

There's no response, and I settle back to think about his offer. I can't help but think: if this is real, if this works out, then I really won't see the Joker again, and that's _good_ , but…

The tears have been building up all day, and now that I'm alone, I turn my face to the pillow and just let them out. This is something I have to do, something I have to commit to, and like he said, the _last_ thing he said to me: _we're never going to see each other again_. If the thought prompts a certain sense of emptiness in me, I'm just going to have to deal with that. It'll be better than continuing to let him cut into me, or inevitably dying at his hand.

Still, I cry, too weak to really reason myself out of it, and it slowly drains my limited energy, taxing me more than I can take. Eventually, I drift again.

I don't know how, but Batman pulled it off.

The DA never even brought charges. From what I gather, there was a small team of exceptionally good lawyers who'd decided to take my case "pro bono," and though _everyone_ knew that was bullshit, no one could prove it. They made the charges disappear, just like that.

As Dr. Wentworth told me when I first woke up, I'd lost a kidney, and taken some damage to the liver as well. I should have bled out, a nurse told me a few days into my stay, and would have if the EMTs hadn't already been en route along with the police when I was shot. I'm almost positive that I owe my survival to Batman's intervention, that he was able to do something to help even before the medics arrived, but I never got the chance to ask.

I healed, slowly, and as I was approaching discharge, a visa arrived, then plane tickets. Apparently I was headed to Dunbar, Scotland. A little research showed me a little coastal town, not far away from Edinburgh, but far enough for me to live life quietly, if that's what I wanted.

I was discharged. I went back to the farmhouse. Bethany had been removed, but there were still bloodstains in my kitchen. I cleaned, taking it easy—my torso was still stiff and hurt if I moved too quickly—until they were gone.

The next day, the movers showed up to pack up the things I wanted. When I tried to ask who'd hired them, who was paying them, they were as clueless as I was. The checks were just signed _Banyon Enterprises,_ and the research on the company (before I caught myself and realized what a profoundly ungrateful move looking into the whole thing was) proved nothing at all.

It was all packed up within a week. I still didn't believe it till I was actually on the flight to Scotland, then it started kicking in. _I'm going. I'm getting free of him. This is actually happening_.

That was six months ago.

Batman, or whoever he had working for him, had secured a little cottage for me—private enough, the only one on the lane, but within easy walking distance of town. It's quiet if I want it to be, or I can walk into town, where there are plenty of pubs if I want company. The Scots I've met here are abrasive and funny, and they get a kick out of making me talk. I've started slowly making friends.

Dunbar is mild-to-chilly year-round, I've been informed. The wind rolling in off the Atlantic Ocean sometimes cuts, but mostly it seems to keep the town from getting too cold. It's gorgeous here, really—Edinburgh's close, London's close, everything's at most a day's train travel away, and although it initially made my head spin (I am from _Nebraska,_ forty-five miles from everything, and even close-quarters Gotham struck me as more anomaly than norm), I've started traveling down to London for a weekend here and there, and come summer, I'm thinking of visiting Italy. For now, though, Dunbar is adjustment enough.

I think about the Joker, but less and less frequently now. I check up on him, but I'm trying to stop. Last time I looked him up, a couple of weeks ago, he was still slumming it in Arkham. I keep trying to tell myself I don't want to know if he gets out.

Placing me across the ocean isn't a failsafe, I know it. If he _really_ wants to find me again, I don't think even flight restrictions will stop him, but more and more, I don't think he _does_ want to find me again. More and more, I think he really meant the last words he said to me.

There might still be traces of the tie I have to him—I still dream about him some nights, restless, anxiety-inducing dreams that always wake me up before sunrise—but for all intents and purposes, it's been severed. Some days are worse than others, but Batman offered me a second chance, and I refuse to be ungrateful for it, to throw it away.

I don't close myself away again. I walk in the fresh sea air, I talk to people. I make friends. There's something hollow in me now, something I don't think will ever feel quite right, but I think time will dull the ache of it, and I have an indefinite amount of years ahead, years that will doubtless bring some degree of healing.

I try to forget.

**fin**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah that son of a bitch doesn't get to kill her :)
> 
> I love you all very much, thank you for following along with me and talking to me and encouraging me and generally being excellent readers. Emma's good where she is, but I'll inevitably be back with more Joker fic. I hope to see you all then.


End file.
